


Strange and Unusual

by SunlitGarden



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Beetlejuice AU, Beetlejuice References, Betty Cooper loves the Andrews family, Betty IS a teen but they do get it on in later chapters so just be aware of that, Betty wants to join the realm of the dead, Consensual Underage Sex, Dark Comedy, F/M, Ghoul Jughead Jones, Ghouls, Juggie wants to join the realm of the living and get revenge, Marriage Contracts, Past Violence, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-08-19 19:23:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20214979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunlitGarden/pseuds/SunlitGarden
Summary: "If I want to play in the realm of living whenever I want and break the curse on my name, I have to marry a living girl."Betty recoils, aghast. "What?!""Trust me, I'm just as creeped out as you are." Jughead rolls his shoulders back, trying to contain his hunger. "Thought I'd always be a bachelor and then you walk into my afterlife…""Fine! Okay! Just help them!" she commands, slamming her hands on the table and stealing a glance back down the staircase where the Andrews family is wasting away.~~~AU loosely based on the film Beetlejuice - where a ravenous ghoul and a shrewd teen make a strange and unusual alliance that goes far deeper than convenience.





	1. Prisoner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betty_cooper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betty_cooper/gifts).

> If you have not seen Beetlejuice some of this stuff may sound bizarre and creepy and um...yes. If you have any questions, please comment or shoot me a message on tumblr @lovedinapastlife. Juggie's got a bit of a harsher edge to him in this fic compared to how I usually write him. He's good to Betty, but just keep in mind he's antagonistic to most others because of his violent death so...yep. So. Without further ado...
> 
> It's SHOWTIME!

Jughead’s stomach is so full that he feels like he’s dying all over again. Pressing a moistened dish rag over his eyes, he leans back on the lawn chair and tries not heave. When the Andrews get back, he wants enough juice in the tank to _thank _them oh-so-kindly for interrupting his show the night before. A 24-hour all-you-can-eat diner wasn’t a fair distraction for a ghost of his caliber.

The attic stairs creak, but it’s just one person, so Jughead doesn’t bother moving from his spot on the roof of Pop’s in this lame-ass miniature of the town he grew up in. “Mr. and Mrs. Andrews?” The voice is sweet. Girlish. He tries to tune it out. Whoever it is clearly knows about the married goody-two-shoes haunting her attic. “Hello? Where are you?”

“Dead. Dead dead deadski,” he grumbles. Scaring a mortal is the last thing on Jughead’s mind with his food hangover in full swing.

He hears the rustle of some kind of light material, the girl stopping in front of the table, probably to try and guess where the voice came from. He’s honestly a little surprised she even heard him. Most living folks don’t see the strange and unusual until he shoves it in their faces. “Of course they’re dead. They’re ghosts.” The derision in her tone makes him snort a laugh. Her condescension switches to curiosity. “Are you a ghost too?”

“I’m the ghost with the most,” he ribs, pulling off the towel with every intention of having her gasp in shock and fear at the purplish bags under his eyes.

His roguish grin is met with vague interest from one of the most goddamn pretty girls he’s ever seen in his life. It almost makes _him _want to scream. She’s not even nervous about him. Maybe she’s not afraid of anything. With softies like Fred and Mary around, it’s no wonder she’s calm around ghosts.

“You know,” he starts, burping into a fist. “You seem like someone I can relate to.”

She raises her eyebrows, unimpressed. Well, he’s unimpressed by her, too. Kind of.

Forcing himself up out of his chair, looping his suspenders back on his shoulders, Jughead prepares to make his case. “Maybe you can help me get out of here. Because I gotta tell you, this being dead thing? It’s--” A roach pokes curiously at one of his leftover burgers. Jughead snatches it, taking a vicious, triumphant bite, mouth full as he turns back to the blonde chick. “It’s just too creepy.”

She frowns, clearly uncomfortable, but not _horrified_, so he goes on. He’s got as good a chance with _her _as with anybody. Better, even, considering she hasn’t gone off screaming, which he still can’t decide is something that impresses him or pisses him off.

“See, I have these friends--”

“_Friends_?” she interrupts, and Jughead flushes that _that’s _the part she has a hard time believing.

“Yeah, some _friends_ that I promised I’d be at their thing and, uh...it’s the kinda thing you have to be there in person. So what do you say? Could you help me get out?”

“Friends, huh?”

“Yes, _friends_,” he practically hisses, trying to catch himself before he curls into a snake again.

“Okay. I think I understand.” Jughead makes a face at her, because what the hell would she know about it? A pretty girl like her probably hasn’t so much as been slapped, let alone beaten to death. “What do I have to do?” She folds her arms over her chest, considering him through slightly puffy, pretty eyes. No makeup, which is rare for a teenage girl, especially one who wears that much black, he thinks.

The idea of being able to break out and get payback on the Andrews and the Ghoulies gets him energized. He holds up his fingers. “All you have to do is say my name...three times.”

“Okay, what’s your name?”

“See,” he hisses in a breath apologetically, “That’s part of the curse. I can’t come out and play unless you say my name three times, but I can’t just tell it to you, either.”  


“O-_kay_.” She frowns, clearly trying to process things. “So I have to guess?”

His hands clap together. It’s _invigorating_ to play with the living. “Let’s do charades, all right?” The heaviness of infinite burgers melts away as he gestures with two fingers up.

“Two words? First word?” She follows quickly. The girl must be used to party games.

Instead of acting it out (which he can only imagine would be embarrassing), Jughead snaps his fingers and summons an illusion above the model town he’s pseudo-trapped in for the moment.

At _that_, the girl gasps. Apparently seeing a giant milk jug apparate is startling, but not communing with ghosts.

“Um...milk? Glass?” He groans at her guesses, trying to roll it along, rounding his hands around his body so that maybe she gets the impression he’s holding breasts or a larger version of that container. She frowns in confused disgust. It’s not like he can blame her. He’d probably find himself revolting if all the dignity hadn’t been beaten out of him. “Jugs?”

“Yes! Singular! Beautiful!”

“Jug?” she repeats dubiously.

“Yes! Beautiful! _Beautiful_! Now,” he gestures for the second word, the milk jug fading away and replaced with a guillotine and a basket. Not wanting to creep her out too badly, the image that plays out is with a doll, it’s stuffing going flying as its head lolls into the bag.

“Beheading? Marie Antoinette? King Louie the--”

“No! No! You had it! Earlier, just chop that up! What was separated?”

“The head?”

“Yes!”

“Head. Jug...Head.”

“Yes, you’re fucking right it is!” He claps once, so hard that his palms sting. His name coming from her lips already has him rippling in anticipation. Oh, he can’t _wait _to be big. Maybe he’ll plant a kiss on that pretty little mouth of hers. Maybe that’ll be enough to scare little miss perfect. “Now say it two more times and we’re outta here!”

Her mouth twists as the illusions fade away. “I really want to wait for Fred and Mary.”

“What?! Why? Those two are the worst.”

“No, they’re not! They’re nice! They’re good people and I wanted to--I want them to be here before...”

He could absolutely strangle her. “Before _what_?”

“Before you kill me,” she admits, crossing her arms defensively.

“Kill you?” he balks. “Why the hell would I kill you?”

“Aren’t you the ghost from last night, the one who slithered up and threatened to eat me?” Annoyed, she gestures to her body, and it takes him a second for the memory to hit him. He’d been so high on adrenaline, everything happened so fast. It’d been a while since he was let out of his cage...or _coffin_, as it were.

_Gorging on their terrified screams, Jughead slithered over to Papa Cooper, who immediately abandoned his family and left his red-haired wife in her tight gaudy dress out to dry. Their friend or gay uncle or whatever he was got knocked off the railing and landed with a satisfying smashing of keys on some kind of piano. What a symphony. Running, screaming, chaos. It was almost too easy to wrap around the wife’s body, squeeze her spine until her throat closed._

_A shoe hit him on the side of the head. “Let her go!”_

_Swiveling, all he saw was yellow. Her spiky ponytail. The lens of his snake eyes. All that anger. That bravery._

_His face twisted into something more similar to his human form, tongue vibrating between sharp teeth._

_“I’m going to eat...you...up,” he’d said, tail rattling as he let the redhead woman sink to the floor in her own horrified piss._

_The blonde girl’s kohl-lined eyes had widened, and although she stepped back, she didn’t run. She took off her other shoe, holding it in her hand, and pressed herself against the wall, waiting for him. For one second, he felt like she was looking at him with a certain amount of resigned gratefulness. The Angel of Death. Oh, he couldn’t wait to see what she would do, what she’d taste like. Then Mary’d appeared at the top of the stairs and screamed his name, swiveling his attention away. “Oh, for fu--” and then he was yanked into a time out in the stupid little mockery of their small town with burgers as his only consolation. Ravenous, he tore through them all instead of that perfect girl’s flesh._

His stomach gurgles at the memory and he tries to uncurl his purpling, reddish fingers without miming taking her pretty little neck and squeezing. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Betty. Betty Cooper.”

Her name slithers under his skin, something to keep. “Betty Cooper.” He jerks his shoulder in a stretch. He’s so _hungry_. “You know how it is...a ghoul’s gotta eat. I had my fill of burgers and beetles today. Now that we’re properly acquainted, what do you say you bring me out to play?” She glances nervously around the attic like she’s still waiting for the Andrews to appear. “I won’t bite.” His teeth clack together for what he hopes is a convincing grin, hands out and entreating her.

“That’s not--I don’t mind if you kill me.”

“What?”

“I _want_ to join the realm of the deceased.”

“Wh--why? It sucks here.” Reeling, he shakes his head. Pretty girls like her shouldn’t have a death wish, but he shouldn’t be getting wrapped up in her problems. He’s got enough of his own. For the first time, he notices the paper crinkled in her hands and gets the distinct impression that she’s been crying over it. “Tell you what, you’ve got your reasons. Why don’t you say my name a few more times and I’ll come out so we can talk about it?”

“You’ll really help me?” she asks, weirdly hopeful.

_Help you off yourself or get you therapy_, he almost clarifies. “Say my name, Betts. Just say my name and we can make this all go away.”

Taking a deep breath, Betty takes a step closer, the gauze of her black dress shifting around her knees. “_Jughead_.”

He straightens his suspenders, fixes his hair. “Yeah, sweetheart. One more time. Just one more time and I’ll be right there with you.”

Saliva thickens his tongue in anticipation as she stares him down. As she opens her mouth to speak, the door to the Neitherrealm opens and draws her attention away.

“Look at me! Say my name, Betty! Say my name!” he shouts, rushing forward to distract her from the embarrassingly amateur corpse contortions the Andrews clearly went through.

“I--” Conflicted, she backs away from the table, and then gasps as Fred’s temporarily eyeball-laden fingers lay a hand on her shoulder.

“Betty--”

She falls back in shock.

“_Say it!” _Jughead yells.

“Betty! Don’t talk to him!”

They’re all shouting her name until she starts yelling back, pushing them away. “Stop it!”

Pushing past the shitshow of attempted gruesomeness, Betty escapes down the attic stairs. Shifting back into her normal form, Mary whirls on him. “What the hell is the matter with you? Didn’t you do enough to scare that poor girl?”

“Like I give a shit!” He’s practically foaming at the mouth. _They're_ the ones that scared her off. “You stupid bunch of Caspers summoned me to raise some Hell and you rush off the first strange and unusual girl I’ve seen in the better half of a century.”

“Go to Hell!”

“If I do, I’m taking her with me!” he hisses, and that’s when Fred’s calloused eyeball-hands grub at him. He jabs the eyeball and sends him reeling, shaking his hand out in defeat. Screaming in frustration, Jughead takes the lawn chair and shatters the neon lettering on top of the diner. His rage keeps building and building. Fiberglass everywhere. Stupid wood chips. The sign flashes _DIE _even though they already have.

“Just go back to the graveyard, creep.”

Adrenaline still pulsing in his veins, Jughead grips onto the jukebox. That’s where everyone wants him. A nice little coffin they can raise for special events like intimidation and then shove back in his grave. He’s done eating dirt.

He has an appetite for something better. Something blonder.

~~~

He catches bits and pieces of what’s going on, luring and snatching bugs with the endless burgers. They’re not exactly gourmet, but at least they’re living. Keep his strength up for when he gets out and exacts some revenge. So he does what he wants. Glowers. Digs. Plots.

Oh, does he have a party ready.

The Andrews have no idea what it takes to get a family like the Coopers out of their house. They couldn’t scare a cat. Jughead’s spent his whole life learning how to push people away. How to make himself bigger and badder, the most desirable ally and the most formidable foe.

But he keeps thinking of Betty and her little death wish, wonders what her corpse would look like if he _did _eat her. Would it stay perfect if he swallowed her whole? Could he bite her just once?

He tears at the astroturf graveyard, finding random materials in this shit town to make her fake flowers, to make himself a gaudy new suit. All of it is his mild rebellion against this “perfect” American dream the Andrews keep holding onto, like there is such a thing. Jughead will leave his mark, show that _weird _can be wild enough to be a fantasy. Seems like it is for Betty, anyway. A kid like that shouldn’t die so young. She can’t be more than 18. He thinks the Andrews have been blabbering on about her going to high school.

He wonders if she’s legal. He was barely legal himself when the Ghoulies came.

All his filters have been beaten away with time, with death.

So the Andrews tell him to shut up every time he asks about her and he burns down another one of their houses until one night they disappear right in front of one another. Surprised, Jughead perks up. Fred panics, calling for his wife over and over again until he’s gone, too.

_Exorcism my ass_, Jughead sighs, shaking his head. Even though they were pains in his side, at least the Andrews were nice. Pity they’re gonna end up as lost souls crumbling in fear instead of building stupid miniature towns in boring domesticity. Once they're dead (again) he can skedaddle back to the Neitherworld and try again. Or maybe talk to that Betty chick.

“Jughead?!”

One foot propped up on the grave marker he’d dragged next to his, Jughead looks up to find Betty in a fancy black dress and veil, panic written all over her face. “Hey, babes. How’s it hangin’?”

The joke is in poor taste, presuming Fred and Mary are floating and trapped in the freak show her parents put on.

“You have to help them,” she begs, getting on her knees so she’s level with him. “Please! They’re going to die, and they’re already dead!”

He chuckles bitterly, knowing how that feels, to some extent. Her eyes are shiny and green and gorgeous, lined with a thick dark coal. He kind of hates them. “If you want my help, you know what you have to do.”

“You won’t hurt them?”

“I swear on my love of burgers.”

With one worried glance to the stairwell and the eerie panicked ambiance of her parents shuffling around downstairs with their _special guests_, Betty turns back to him with resolve. “Okay.”

He smiles. It doesn’t feel like a win yet. He didn’t want it to be like this. All work and no play.

"But you have to do one more thing for me."

"Are you serious?"

Time's running out, but he doesn't need much of it to do what she wants and she's just desperate enough he might get what _he _wants. "If I want to play in the realm of living whenever I want and break the curse on my name, I have to marry a living girl."

She recoils, aghast. "_What_?!"

"Trust me, I'm just as creeped out as you are." He rolls his shoulders back, trying to contain his hunger. "Thought I'd always be a bachelor and then you walk into my afterlife…"

"Fine! Okay! Just help them!" she commands, her clean nails landing on the table.

He lets out a breath, all the tension in his body melting away with the vision of her on the other side of the altar. "You know what to do, Betts."

“Jughead.” A shiver runs through his body. “_Jughead_.” Betty looks like she’s wrestling with herself, with whatever Fred and Mary told her about him. Maybe she’s wrestling with her own mortality, he muses glumly, loving the way her skin glows from the fluorescent lights. “Jughead.”

The suffocating cling-wrap feeling over the miniature town is lifted. Jughead takes a deep breath. Patting either sleeve of his black and white striped suit, Jughead holds his hands out to her and smiles. “It’s _showtime_.”

~~~

Being big feels good again. He loves towering over her, watching the way her lips part in awe as he knocks aside the model homes so he can approach his future bride.

He grins down at her, his body lighting up with the power he's been cultivating just for his grand entrance.

"Jughe-" If she says his name three times again, he'll be whisked away, and he can't have that. Not when they have so much to do. But first…

He silences her by grabbing her face between his hands and pulling her in. It’s been _so long_ that the kiss ends up being more smashing faces than anything else. She moans in protest, the vibration feeding his growing hunger for chaos. A sharp sting at his neck and cheek has him reeling.

“You promised! The Andrews!” Betty demands, eyes blazing and cheeks flushed. _Oh_. Her mouth is slightly swollen from his little hello.

He licks his lips, savoring the salty taste of her, even her sweet coconut lip balm.

Huffing, she pushes at his chest, ready to run back downstairs to the little seance party and raise her own hell. Only her or the Andrews can send him back now that they know his name, and he wants to make sure she understands that. As she opens her mouth to rant at him, maybe bite his wandering hands off, he smiles, feeling strangely proud of her fire.

"Shh," he warns, touching a finger to her lips, then transferring the not-quite kiss to his. "Save my name for the bedroom, Betts."

Looking dazed, Betty just blinks at him, the tears she'd shed for the Andrew's dusting her eyelashes. "We can’t you have you upset on your wedding day, and I _certainly_ don't want to be upstaged, so...first things first." He snaps his fingers, the Andrews' crumbling corpses falling into a pile of dust, formal wear included. They’re transported out of the seance link for now, right back into their tiny town until they can figure out how to pop into places. He thinks that's relatively tame for his taste in karma, but he considers it a wedding present to Betty.

“Where did they go?” he hears the rich visitors ask downstairs. Like _that’s _the real tragedy, not the torture they were ignorantly inflicting by forcing ghosts on display.

These guests are exactly the kind of people who would use his curse for ill will. For gain.

“One second, Betts.”

She looks like she's about to protest as he whirs past her, popping up at the long end of the table where the Cooper _guests_ are seated.

“You all here for a show?” His voice sounds eerily distorted, even to his own ears.

Oh, it’s good to be _out_.

With a quick flick of the wrist, the table grows a layer of green felt, shiny sequins glistening with all the smarmy charm of a Vegas lounge. The Suit and his wife gasp, delighted.

“Amazing!”

Penelope looks less sure, her black cloak and feathered mask a ridiculously gaudy if absolutely hilarious addition to the evening.

“Honey, are you seeing this?” Hal gapes, neck craned back as if he thinks she might’ve teleported them to a spaceship.

“Where are the Andrews?” she asks levelly, eyeing Jughead in his pinstripe vest, light-up bowtie, and tight pants as part of his costume of a high-end dealer. The purplish bruises all over his skin from his death make them nervous and wary, but they’re all so fucking smug about discovering _the afterlife _that they don’t question his presence. Nor do they recognize him as a snake.

They’re not nearly as smart as Betty is.

“You roll, I’ll deal the goods on the Andrews. Bet you’d like to know how to keep good little ghosts like them for a side show, am I right?”

“Well, we were thinking more like a museum piece, or perhaps private showings--” one of the dark-haired suits rambles.

“Don’t know, don’t care. I'd be glad to be rid of them. Here, why don’t you _roll the dice_?” The bone-carved die glow unnaturally white. Fascinated by their magical properties, the woman in pearls picks them up with her false nails.

“Hermione!” her husband calls sharply, making her drop one of them into his hands. “Interesting. I wonder if we could reproduce these.”

“Hold on there, bub. It's a high stakes business. First things first.” Summoning a box of high-end cigars, Jughead gestures to the table again, hoping they suck right on their poison sticks and roll into their own deaths. “When it comes to capitalizing on the afterlife, you have to be _all in_.”

Eyes lighting up at the Aztec gold coins piling up in front of him, the businessman pushes the tower into the center of the table.

“Hiram, I don’t know about this,” his wife warns, her diamond ring glinting as she reaches to pull the false loot back.

“Come on, mi amor. What do we have to lose? Penelope can always control this one if he tries to do anything, right?”

“Right,” Penelope affirms with false bravado, eyeing Jughead shrewdly. What a hack. She takes a peek at one book, reads up on seances on the internet, and thinks she can corral spirits like they’re all docile little Andrews-lambs to the slaughter?

“Test your luck,” he dares them, gesturing widely to the array of jeweled skulls that pop up on his end of the table.

Eyes glimmering, Hiram shakes the die in his fist and lets it roll, his wife hurriedly jerking and releasing hers beside him. As the dice clatter across the vibrant, promising green of the felt, Jughead senses Betty coming down the stairs to check on things.

He’s gotta be quick.

Tongue flicking out to wet his lips, he watches the dice roll over to a stop with one singular black hole on either one.

“What does that mean?” Hermione asks, turning to Penelope, the _afterlife interpreter_.

“_Snake eyes_.” The married pair’s eyes widen as his tongue flutters on the _s’s_. Uncoiling, he apparates into his best slithering self, emerging from the black holes of the die as separate entities, practically hypnotizing his prey. Oh, it’d be so easy to swallow them. Make Penelope lose her million dollar deal, make the rich jerks of this town wallow in the depths until he deemed them worthy enough to come out of the bottomless pit of his belly.

“Jughead!” Betty cries, and he hisses in her direction.

“Don’t _sssay _it!”

She swallows, eyes wide, full of regret, maybe hoping they haven’t heard her. Not that the Coopers know his curse yet, but he’s not eager for them to figure it out, either, if the way they treated the Andrews is anything to go by.

Needing a quick distraction, Jughead turns back to the entitled rich friends. He’d _hate _for these two prissy assholes to be forced to haunt with the little Andrews family. So would Betty. “I'm just limiting the guest list, babe!” With a hearty smack from his tail, he sends the richly-dressed pair flying so hard that they break through the weak wooden walls and land in a heap outside. The fresh air feels good.

He shivers, snatching the dice away from Penelope as she makes a horrified grab for them. “Ah, ah, ah, _miss._ This little apparition doesn’t count as a personal item of mine. No seances for me today, thanks.”

Penelope backs away, attempting to see her greedy investor friends through the hole in the wall while Hal keeps creeping away slowly like Jughead is an animal in the wild he can escape if he doesn't make any sudden moves.

Edging forward, Betty looks ashen. “Are they…?”

“Only wusses die from being knocked out a second story window. I would know.” The joke _almost _hits. He sees incredulity and vague amusement pass in her eyes, quickly swallowed by panic when Penelope goes for the Andrews’ book again.

“Someone’s feeling territorial!” He thrusts his upturned hand back towards himself, pulling the ridiculous Manual for the Recently Deceased to his side. “Your party’s over, Red, and with that bad attitude, you’re not invited to ours.”

“Wha--?”

With a flick of his wrist, Jughead animates one of her creepy-ass sculptures, the hideous almost-animals crawling with a sickening metallic lurch towards her.

“Oh, what on Eve’s Earth? Hal! _Hal!_” She picks at her tightly wound dress like it’ll somehow be more than a wearable Chinese finger trap.

“Pops! Come back!" Jughead calls tauntingly, "we need you to be a witness as you give your daughter away!”

"My daughter...away?" Hal freezes, blinking dumbly.

Clearly, Betty inherited her intelligence from her mother's side. From what he's gathered during his time out in mini Riverdale, Red is the evil stepmother.

"Get over here." His mock-friendly-chiding is accompanied by a quick wave that has Hal skidding across the floor at record speeds.

"Dad!" Betty catches him. The man in his v-neck sweater and sports coat clings to his teenage daughter like he's forgotten how to use his own legs. It kind of pisses Jughead off that both times his teenage daughter has been in a dangerous situation - at least the times _he's_ seen - Hal runs away to protect himself. With this dysfunctional of a family, no wonder she wants to join the Andrews clan in the afterlife.

As Penelope is downed and trapped by her own "art," Jughead turns to his new favorite person and puts out his arm, back in his new suit. "Shall we?"

Betty looks confused for a second, but then she looks down and sees her black dress has been transformed to a black and white wedding gown and seems _stunned_.

"Betty," her father whispers, horrified. He jerks back as soon as Jughead gently hovers her towards him.

"Wait...the Andrews!"

"Safe and sound in their own little town," he promises, tucking her hand through his arm. "You’re shaking, Betts. Pre-wedding jitters? Thought I’d have them myself, but...it’ll be over in a flash." He reassuringly pats her hand, rubbing it more forcefully when he realizes how cold her fingers are.

Getting married is almost secondary in his mind, but then Mary Andrews appears at the top of the stairs in her flower-printed dress and a switch goes off. “Oh, here we go.” He rolls his eyes, already raising a hand as she starts to spit his name. With a flick of his wrist, her mouth literally zippers shut. He quickly summons an old ordained Serpent pal, Joaquin, who dusts off some ash from the magically revamped fireplace as he crawls through the flames.

Hal looks like he’s about to melt, face waxen and pale. Jughead almost shoves him into a chair but Mary starts with the “Jughe--” again so he sighs, winding up his arm, ignoring Betty’s plea as he slaps Mary with something slightly more permanent. An iron slab over her mouth.

“How about you forever hold your peace, Yellow Wallpaper?” he snaps.

Mary looks furious, pulling at the metal trap without knowing how to take it off.

“Anyway.” He runs a hand through his hair, shaking off the tension while keeping an ear out for Fred. “Shall we?”

“Dearly beloved…” Joaquin is not nearly as animated as Jughead would like, considering the circumstances, but none of that really matters. He’s busy checking out his new wife and idly wondering if he has time to ravage her before he exacts his revenge on the Ghoulies. Probably. If she wants to.

Betty catches him looking and when their eyes meet, his smirk widening, her weight dips.

“Whoa! Careful! Bride down,” he teases, helping her stand upright again. “Am I making you weak in the knees?”

Her mouth opens, but she seems at a loss for words, dizzy, almost, as she clings to his arm.

Dead blue eyes regard them passively. “The rings?”

“Ah, shit! The rings! Hold on, Betts.”

That’s the trouble with impromptu proposals. He doesn’t have a fucking _ring_. Quickly designing something on the fly, he crunches them into existence via his fist, a matching set.

“You like?”

She glances warily from the ring to his face and he almost wants to vomit from the nerves he feels under her appraisal.

_Like them_, he wants to growl. _Like _**_me_**_._

“You can’t marry her, she’s only sixteen!” Hal stutters, dumbfounded.

“Lucky for us, that doesn’t apply for the afterlife.” Neitherworld rules. Stupid things. Age is ridiculous. There’s just _time_.

“I’m...I…” Panicking, Betty takes his ring from his palm as he quickly takes her hand to shove hers into place until it gleams. There are scars on her palms. Thick, crescent-shaped scars. He kneads her hands in a massage so he can feel them.

“I do,” he supplies for her, quirking a brow.

“I…” Her gaze darts back up to the stairs where Mary has tear tracks running down her cheeks is frantically gesturing for what he assumes is Fred to come down the stairs.

“Don’t look at them. Look at me.”

Swallowing hard, Betty turns those pretty green eyes onto him. There's a conflict there. Pain. But not disgust. In fact, she seems to be pleading, her eyes getting bigger.

“You just...you worked so fast, I didn’t get a chance to process--”

“That was nothing. Imagine what I can do in the bedroom.” He winks, feeling cheeky and victorious on the edge of breaking his fucking name-curse.

Her cheeks flush pink and she whacks him on the chest. “You didn’t say anything about sleeping together!”

“Consider it a perk.”

“Oh my god,” she grumbles, shoving the ring on his finger. “I am _not_ having sex with a ghoul I hardly even know...especially one who bullies my friends.”

“They summoned _me_!” He gestures back wildly, staring at his hand more than he should with the ring and its black and white stones on it. He realizes it’s almost a yin and a yang. “And for your information, they bullied _me _and kept me prisoner for _days_.”

“Really? Fred and Mary kept _you _prisoner?”

“Yes! They’re not as perfect as you think, Betty, _darling_.” Incredulous, he turns back to Joaquin, who’s holding the marriage book calmly, eyebrows raised as if he sees these kinds of outbursts all the time when the guy has never even performed a living-ghoul ceremony before.

“Can you just pronounce us man and wife already?”

“She needs to say ‘_I do_.’”

“_I do_.” Betty slaps a hand over her mouth, gaping at him for puppeting her words.

Just then Fred’s voice plows across the room. “Jughead!”

“Shut! _Up!_” He slaps _him _with the iron mouth, too.

Betty’s elbow strikes hard, Jughead’s eternally bruised ribs almost cracking.

“_Fuck_,” he groans, doubling over before glaring at her, tempted to strike back. “You done?”

“I promised I’d marry you. That doesn’t mean you get to be a jerk about it.”

Nostrils flaring, he gestures to Mary, who’s running towards them with a fire poker in hand. “We’re kinda short on time, babe! Or do you wanna call off your ghost protection squad?”

To his surprise, Betty does step in front of him, arms raised. “Stop!” Mary skids to a halt, her eyes watery and confused. “I promised I’d marry him if he saved you. He did. So I will.” Betty smooths her skirt and fixes him with a determined gaze. “I do.”

It knocks the breath right of him. Dulls his aches and pains.

“By the unholy powers vested in me, I now pronounce you…”

He doesn’t hear the rest. Jughead grabs Betty and kisses her hard and deeply. Firm and warm and bending into him, that’s what she is. Her hand winds up into the lapels of his blazer but his ears are pounding too hard with adrenaline to process things right.

Somebody’s wailing, so he waves and makes them sing his favorite song instead to announce their union.

It feels good. _Really_ good. Maybe he missed out by not making out with girls when he was alive.

As he moans, sucking her lips, something rattles.

It’s Mary, throwing the fire poker to his feet in a fit of rage. He glares at her before looking back at his bride, who seems unusually quiet, avoiding his gaze and staring at his slightly bruised and bloody lips instead. She touches her mouth, glancing at her fingers like she’s half expecting them to be stained red.

“Come on, Betts. Say my name.”

Eyes flashing, she looks up at him. “Jughead.” There’s a shiver, still, but he doesn’t think it’s the curse at work.

“Mmhm.” His thumbs skid under her jaw, oblivious to their audience.

“Jughead.”

“Yeah. Once more, babes.”

Her hand tightens on his lapel. “_Jughead_.”

He grins, delicious power flowing through him as everyone outside of their little bubble radiates panic and fear. “It’s..._showtime_.”


	2. the honeymooners

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok it's not technically DONE yet but you've waited long enough for some hot and heavy Beetle!jug love. This is their honeymoon. There's sexy stuff. Be waaaarned *eyebrow waggle* Jug may now f*ck the bride

Jughead hoists Betty up around the waist so she doesn’t pass out or fall during teleportation. The skirts of her dress are full and ruffly and fantastic to hold onto where he can’t grip flesh. His cheeky grin is met with steel resolve. The way she clings to him when they snap into the hotel is actually a little adorable. “Get used to riding in the fast lane, babe.”

Frowning, she touches her hair, still curly and spiky in its usual updo. Betty turns to look around the room. A suite - not that stupid, tacky prison. It's the nicest penthouse in Riverdale. He’d take her somewhere exotic, but this is the first place he thought of. The height of his young existence was breaking into this room and wishing he would have enough money and power to rent it one day. It feels weird sharing it with a relative stranger, but he adds some flowers in vases and candles to make it _more appealing _to her, he guesses.

Feeling nervous amidst her silence and his new freedom, he snaps a room service cart into view. “Finally, it’s time to celebrate!”

Jughead yanks up the silver trays and starts snatching food to stuff his face with. It’s heavenly. Steaming, warm, juicy...much better than the roaches he’s used to crunching on for snacks.

For her part, Betty still appears to be processing. She unpins her hair, letting it fall in loose waves around her shoulders as she sets the veil on a vanity. Her shoes end up in a pile kicked to the side as she wanders, touching everything: the varnished dark wood furniture, Egyptian cotton sheets, soft flower petals, warm jacuzzi water, the hard edge of a champagne bottle.

“Hungry?” he offers, gesturing a giant drumstick in her direction. When she seems perplexed by the gesture of red meat, he summons fruit and chocolate fondue next to her by the jacuzzi. Maybe she’s vegetarian. He shudders to think that he married one.

A bit despondent, she attempts a nod. “Nice spread.”

“Thanks.” Some meat falls from his cheesy grin.

As she plucks a piece of cantaloupe from the pile, she sits on the edge of the tub and regards him carefully. Her hair looks nice down. He kinda wants to tell her that, but his throat is full of what he thinks is turkey.

She pokes the orange fruit with her tongue like she’s testing if it tastes right, considering him. “So we’re really doing this?”

The lump forces itself down to his bottomless pit. “Doing what?”

“Being married?” He makes a face because he thought she was smarter than that. “I just mean...how does this even work? There was no ‘til death do us part, because…”

Rolling his eyes, Jughead tosses the gnawed-over bone behind him where it splatters and clunks into a trash can. “I’m already dead. I know.”

“So...what are we doing? Are you going to kill me after this, or…?”

“What is it with you and this death wish?” he scowls, digging his fingers into another row of meats.

“I guess I don’t know what to expect,” she huffs, dunking a piece of fruit messily so that even her nails get coated. He tries to repress the urge to suck them into his mouth.

“Seeing as you’re my first wife, it’s not like I have any great ideas. Besides snacks, sleep, and...” He wiggles his eyebrows mischievously, unable to help himself. She tosses a piece of cantaloupe at his chest. “Hey! Don’t be wasting that hard-made food!”

“You literally snapped your fingers. I wouldn’t call that hard-made.”

“It still takes energy and focus,” he mumbles, dusting off the fruit and popping it in his mouth.

“That was on the floor!”

“What are some germs gonna do? Kill me?” She giggles, honest-to-god _giggles_, and he feels lighter than air, sucking his fingers free of juice like he can savor it for later. “Wanna go for a soak?”

She looks behind her at the jacuzzi, now sprinkled with rose petals in the shape of his smiling face. “You’re really weird, you know that?”

“That’s me. I’m weird. I’m a _weirdo_,” he insists, not bothering to take off his converse as he moves towards her, twerking her nose with his still-wet fingers and grinning at the wrinkled way she pulls back. Water sloshes up onto the tiles as he goes into the hot tub, suit and all. Leaning back, arms up on either side, he relishes the warm, bubbling water.

“And _proud_ of it, I see.” Her eyes are alight with mischief, with something he hasn’t seen towards _him_ in...well...a _while. _

“Come on in, the water’s fine.”

Betty stands up and fiddles with her dress. “The Andrews, my parents, even the Lodges, are they all still…?”

He squirms, not sure how to answer without basically implicating the level of devilry he’s managed. “The Andrews can talk again, if that’s what you’re worried about. But honestly, talking about the in-laws is kind of killing my buzz.”

“Oh, _excuse me_,” she mocks, dipping a toe in the water. He watches her, bubbles rising eagerly against the underside of his tank top. “I don’t want to ruin this dress.”

“I can always snap you into another one. Or out of one, should the mood strike.” He fiddles with the hot tub froth, trying not to hope he’s gotten a rise out of her.

“No, I know, but…” She lifts the skirts, seeming to calculate how many bubbles will inflate it before shocking him by unzipping and stepping out of the dress altogether. That’s a lot of bare flesh for him at once. A _lot_. Even though he’s got her in some cute black and white lingerie, which he’s pretty sure came straight from his subconscious, Betty’s..._exposed_. And he’s growing rapidly hard.

“_Fuck_, Betts.”

“It’s not like I have a bathing suit.” She shrugs, carefully dropping her dress to the side as she steps into the water, sliding into the seat kitty corner of the entire side he’s taken up with his long arms.

“I could’ve snapped you one.”

Annoyed, Betty tilts her head back and re-pins her hair up so it doesn’t get caught in the streams.

Fuck it if he isn’t hungry for her flesh.

Fingers twitching, he tries to figure out if this means she’s willing to do the whole _married _thing for real. The whole..._physical_ part of that.

He flicks the surface of the water.

“So what does a pretty girl like you do for fun?”

Rolling her eyes, Betty reaches for another piece of fruit. When she settles back against the tub, her bra’s gone pretty much sheer. He has to groan and palm his pants to make sure she doesn’t see any prominent outlines.

“I read. I used to work at the paper and yearbook of my old school. Dance committees. Boring stuff, I guess.”

“Why’s that boring? I used to love to write.”

Her eyebrows raise up in surprise. “Really? What did you write?”

“Angsty, grungy bullshit. I was the next Holden Caulfield.”

“You mean the next J.D. Salinger.”

Practically humming, his fingers squeegee against the hot tub edge. “You know your literature.”

With a tiny shrug, Betty twirls the pieces of her hair that are curling into the water, watching the blonde darken. “I haven’t joined anything at my new school. Apparently freaks who show up in all black halfway through the school year don’t exactly have a lot of pull with the student body. Although I _was _repeatedly directed to the ‘poets society’ which is mostly host to people who think they need to write like some combination of Dr. Seuss and Edgar Alan Poe.”

“No wonder you wanted to off yourself,” he snorts, splashing her a little. He sees the wince behind her smile, though, so he decides to lighten up. Living people can be touchy about death. Sometimes _he _is. “Bet the Wiccan gals were clamoring to get a hold of a babe like you. Too bad all they did in my time was organize pot brownie bake sales and listen to _The Cure_.”

She giggles again, head leaning back as she closes her eyes in content. “Pretty sure there’s no Wiccan or Satanist club at Riverdale High right now or I would’ve been a shoe-in.”

“You could _make_ a club.” His eyes rake over her wet, exposed neck, her soaked, sudsy chest.

“Sure. Or an afterlife-enthusiast group. We could call ourselves _The Ghoulies_.” The tub squeals, cracks. Betty sits up in alarm. “What was that?”

“Don’t...don’t call them that. Don’t call anything that,” he warns, lowly. When she hesitates, going to cover herself, he tries to unknot the screaming coil around his heart as he explains, “That’s the name of the gang that beat me to death.”

“Juggie…” The nickname pricks like she’s prodded every single one of his bruises. “I’m sorry.” Her sincerity has him squirming, ready to make a joke. She moves across the jacuzzi and lays a hand on his half-submerged sleeve, squeezing. “That’s terrible.”

“It’s fine. Ironic, really. They were the Ghoulies and I became a ghoul.” He shifts, every unnecessary breath aching.

Contemplative, Betty keeps rubbing his arm. “It kind of freaked me out to see Fred and Mary in pain like that during the seance. I thought once you died...nothing would hurt anymore.”

He grunts.

“Guess that’s not the case.” Her eyelashes are so long and pretty.

“No. That’s not the case.” He rearranges his arms around her and moves forward until they’re both in the center or the hot tub, her legs instinctually wrapping around his waist.

“Does it hurt still...to be touched?”

“No. Sometimes it just _hurts_,” he muses, not sure if that’s technically true, but he’s so happy to be holding her bare back that he doesn’t care if she knows a secret or two.

“I get that.” Her finger curls loosely around his hair and she tugs. A sharp burst of light flashes deliciously behind his eyelids. “Do you still feel _pleasure_?”

Grinning, practically gloating, he pulls her against his body to meet his hard-on. She gasps, looking between the bubbling water and his face. “Does that freak you out, babe?”

“No. I’m just…curious. Maybe a little confused.” For once in his afterlife, Jughead keeps his goddamn mouth shut, watching her conflicted expression with a fangy grin on his face until she leans forward and presses her lips to his.

Moaning, he grips her tighter, unaware of the way his blazer coattails billow behind him as he sucks on pretty Betty Cooper...Betty _Jones_’s mouth.

“Juggie--” Her thighs scramble at his sides.

Ravenous, he pushes her up against the tub wall and grabs a handful of her ass. He devours her moans. Rubs up against her to make her gasp and squeeze her thighs tight around his hips.

With a little bit of fumbling, he’s able to unhook her bra, his thumbs going up under the flimsy lace material to skid her soft, supple breasts. That’s when she gets antsy. He can feel her squirm under him, breaking away to get air, even as he nips at her jaw and throat.

“Jug…”

He palms one breast fully, squeezing it in his hand as he helps guide her along his cock through his suit pants. Pleasure just keeps building and building, but he hears one sniffle and it’s enough to make him stop.

The water’s made the charcoal around her eyes murky. Smudged and tumultuous. She looks...disheveled. He likes that she’s clearly aroused, however she also looks like she’s bordering on overwhelmed.

Even though he wants to rip her underwear off and come between her thighs, this has been _more _than enough for now.

He slides back, wiping his face with the water. “Sorry, babe. Got carried away.”

“S’okay.” Her heart’s still beating wildly. He can almost smell the adrenaline on her. “I just...I’ve never had a boyfriend before, and that was…”

“Amazing?”

“Fast,” she finishes, cheeks heated.

“Technically I’m your husband, so I think we skipped a couple of steps.”

“We didn’t even get a first date,” she laughs, awkwardly attempting to re-wrangle the useless bra into place.

“Here, let me.” He summons a front clipping bikini top for her but leaves her in the lacy panties.

“Thanks.” Betty scoots back and up until she’s sitting on the edge of the jacuzzi, her bare legs on display to cool down, he guesses, even though he’s pretty sure he’s burning up from head to toe. From his drooling, she must be able to tell he’s hungry, because she leans over and grabs a strawberry. “Something to eat?”

As he arches his neck forward, teeth sinking into the fruit, he keeps eye contact the whole time, imagining the tartness dripping down his chin is something much more sinful than fruit.

“You have one hell of an appetite for a dead guy.”

He snorts a laugh, juice spilling over his chin. “Was that supposed to be a pun?”

“No. I just meant that I don’t think Fred and Mary eat anything. I wasn’t sure if they needed to.”

“They’re missing out. Food is one of the great pleasures in life. That, and sex.” Or so he’s heard.

She quirks an eyebrow, still holding onto the top of the strawberry. “So you’re telling me I’m married to a gluttonous pervert?”

“Lucky you.” He grins, wiping his lips and sucking the juices clean in a way that makes Betty shake her head good-naturedly. “And what kind of girl did I marry?” As Betty shifts to drop off the inedible part of the strawberry and grab a new one for herself, he plays in the water a little. “I know she’s _smart_, _brave_, at least a little naughty.” This time he’s ready for the fruit to be thrown at him and snaps it out of the air with his teeth.

She quirks an eyebrow. “Nice.”

He squashes and swallows it easily. “I’m a man of many talents.”

Her gaze drops down to her feet. “I’m sure you are.”

He floats a little closer. “So I’ve noticed that you enjoy throwing things. You ever been on a softball team?”

“When I was like, five.” Her toes peek up above the water line. “My dad used to take me. I stopped playing in junior high.”

“He actually did something besides cower and hide? What if someone hit the ball at him?”

“Maybe that’s why we stopped going.” A pause lingers, stretching out between them, and he chews on his tongue so he doesn’t interrupt her thoughts. “My parents got divorced and it got hard for them to be civil at games.”

“How uncivil?” he prods, loving the dish, the chaos.

“My mom threw a brick through my dad’s car window.”

“So that’s where you get it from.” They both laugh and he almost floats right out of the water when she nudges him with her thigh. “Where’s Mom now? Serving society?”

“She’s not in _jail!_ She’s just in Ohio!”

“Ohio or jail, which is worse?” he pretends to contemplate, relishing the splash she throws his way. “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with serving time. My parents were in and out of jail and look how I turned out.” He flashes his bloody, strawberry-juice laden smile at her. Although she smiles back, its undertones are laced with sympathy and he _hates _that, so he stands up and moves in front of her, his jacket heavy with water. “I’m the ghost with the most. Freedom, powers, fruit snacks, a smart and sexy wife...”

“I’m listed below fruit snacks?”

“Don’t be jealous, babe. I’ve had a relationship with food long before I ever met you.”

“Mmhm.” She watches, unimpressed, as he snags more of the fruit near her side, dipping it in chocolate until the fruit itself disappears. “So tell me about this curse. Why did you have a name thing yet the Andrews are stuck in their house? And why was getting married your way of breaking it?”

Boring conversation, and an awkward subject, so Jughead tries to make it as short as possible. “The intent of the ‘powers that be’ is to make you resent the thing you’re most proud of and then get over it, I guess. Stupid fucking system but it is what it is.”

“You were proud of the name Jughead?” She’s not saying it to be mean, he knows, but it rattles him all the same.

“I was proud to disown the name of my father and make one of my own.” Rolling over to the fruit tray, Jughead eyes her in this dressed-down state. He’d rather be talking about almost anything else. Or not talking. Maybe watching. Touching. Eating.

“Okay, so you were proud of your name and autonomy and the Andrews were proud of the home they built.”

“Someone pays attention in class. Nerd.” He doesn’t even move back when she nudges him in a half-hearted kick.

“Why did you have to get married to break it? The Andrews are already together, it’s not like _they_ can just…” Her brow furrows in a cute way that has him reaching for her side, wiggling his fingers against her until she squirms and pushes on him, eyes wide in realization. “Breaking the curse is different for everyone the same way the curse itself is different, isn’t it?”

This time he’s the one exasperated. “Are you already trying to ‘save’ the Andrews? They’ve been dead for less than a year. They’ll figure it out.”

Betty holds his hand in her lap so he stops tickling her. Kinda domestic, in his opinion, even if he does have the impulse to explore up her thigh. “Of course I want to help my friends. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

“It’s been a while since I’ve had any,” he mutters. It’s almost _upsetting_, which is stupid.

“I’ll be your friend,” she promises, rubbing her thumb along his hand. “I know we’re married...but that doesn’t mean we can’t...build that part of it, too.”

“Oh, Betty Cooper. You’re a good person. That’s a shame, because I really thought we were going to work out,” he muses, stepping between her legs and leaning in just enough to feel a tingle of anticipation without the swelling of his arousal.

He can hear her heartbeat pick up. “Are you going to kill me now?”

“No.” He kisses her cheek, relishing the way she watches him. His fingers graze the underside of her palm. “Tell me about these scars.” When she flinches, trying to pull back, he tightens his grip and kisses her other cheek. “Hey, come on! You show me yours, I’ll show you mine!” He lifts up his undershirt to show her his battered ribs, bruised stomach.

Betty goes still, almost _too _still. It was supposed to be a joke.

Maybe she’s realized what she’s gotten herself into. Maybe she can’t deal with it.

As he goes to push his shirt back down, he’s stopped by her urgent touch. “Wait.” His heart rattles its cage to get out as she traces his skin with soft, warm fingers. Not just the wounded parts. Everything.

Her eyes are dim when she looks back up at him. She pulls her hand out of his to show him her red and white crescent moons. “I did _this _to myself. It’s so...it’s stupid.”

“No it’s not, babe.” Whatever new _husband _instinct he has kicks in and he pulls her hands to his chest before bending down to kiss her dangerous little fingers.

“When I get stressed or the world seems like too much, I press in and just...it helps, sometimes. The only reason it looks so bad now is because of the seance. I saw Fred and Mary literally turning into dust and they were so in love and it just didn’t seem fair. It was my fault, really, for telling my crazy family they existed in the first place. I should’ve known...” She swipes at the dirty tear streaking down her cheek, smearing the charcoal around her eyes. Sniffing, she looks up at him with something that _might _be relief. “But you saved them and now they’re fine, so everything’s back to normal, I guess.”

Distinctly uncomfortable, he pulls her into an almost-hug. “Anyone ever tell you _you’re _weird?” She breathes out a laugh, hugging him for real. “Hey, babe, just keep in mind all I have to do is snap my fingers and your problems can disappear. I’m an exorcist.”

She strokes the back of his hair. It makes his lungs rattle pleasantly like a massage chair. “I’m not sure you can exorcise feelings--just snap your fingers and make them go away.”

“No.” He presses a kiss to her shoulder. “But I can exorcise the hell out of other bad things.”

She laughs. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

After exchanging a few stupid smiles, Jughead settles back in the water, Betty stepping over his lap and settling in to share fruit with him.

“I have to be honest, Betty. I still want to eat you up,” he confesses, chasing her fingers for a bit of chocolate.

“You’re just delusional from the heat of the tub. We should probably get you out of those wet clothes.”

“Gladly.” He grins, wiggling his eyebrows, but she covers his hand before he can snap his fingers and make them disappear.

“I want...I want to go slow.”

Sinking down into the water and raising her up with his knees, he watches her arch back, pictures what she’d feel like on his cock. His throne. “Okay, babe. You tell me when.”

The look in her eyes is enough for him to snap them out of the water.

She topples back onto the bed, scrambling onto her elbows while he turns on the TV for something in the background. Whatever she likes. Instead of watching TV, though, she’s staring at the way his wet clothes cling to his frame. Especially the tank top under his jacket.

“You don’t mind if I get into something more comfortable, do you?”

“No.” Her voice is tight.

“Now, Betts, I know you’re not afraid of a little costume change. What is it? You wanna ogle me some more in these wet clothes?”

“I would..._not!_” she flushes, throwing a fistful of ice cubes at him from the champagne flute.

He chuckles, dodging. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much. What do you want? This is your honeymoon, and just about as relaxed as I’m ever going to be. Tell your husband Juggie what you want as a treat.”

Flushing, she looks away. “My _husband_…”

“So there _is _something.” Kneeling, he leans forward with his hand propping up his face. “Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

“No. It’s embarrassing. I hardly know you.”

He laughs, almost gurgling. It sounds almost _boyish_ to his own ears. “I don’t think anything you could say would be embarrassing. Most of my hang-ups died along with me. You want to dress up like a pony princess and have me go up your ass? Fine. You want me to paint your toenails and baby you? Also fine. It doesn’t have to be sexual.” He ghosts a finger along her calf. “I’d really like it to be.”

Squirming, she moves back on the bed. “Could you keep it on?”

“Keep what on?”

“Your suit. Wet. I want it...I like it on, right now.”

Smiling, he nods, flapping the jacket until it spatters the floor. “Anything else, babe?”

Licking her lips, Betty studies one of his eyes, then the other, like she’s waiting for him to rescind the offer.

“Come on. No judgment. I’m _hungry_.”

Swallowing hard, Betty unclips the front of her bikini top. Even the wriggle of her shoulders as she slides out of it has him hard. Tossing the bikini top off the bed, Betty takes deep, even breaths. She lifts her hips as her thumbs go into the sides of her underwear.

“Maybe just let me...can I touch myself to you?”

That’s not what she wants, though, and he can see it by the hesitation in her eyes.

“I’m not going to hurt you, babe. Not unless you ask me to. What do you _want_?”

“I wanted...I’ve always been curious about what it’s like for a guy to go down on me.”

Beaming, he sits up. “Really?”

Shy, despite her beautiful, pert breasts on display, Betty nods.

“My pleasure.” Climbing forward onto the bed, Jughead watches with rapt anticipation as Betty shimmies out of her underwear. The smell of her hits him and it nearly makes his eyes roll back into his head in awe, even amidst all the flowers and food. “Just keep talking to me, babe. I’ll give you what you want.”

She nods, nervous, but not quite _afraid_. With a wolfish grin, he takes a breast in hand, sucking its pretty pink nipple into his mouth. Oh, he loves the feeling of her arching underneath him. He can see that everywhere his wet clothes touch, waves of goosebumps erupt on her skin.

He grins, her breast popping free with its obscene, saliva-coated sheen. “Oh, Betty. You dirty, wonderful girl. I want you to say my name tonight, okay?”

“Juggie…”

“Talk to me or I might stop.”

Breath hitching, Betty shoves her fingers into his hair and pushes his face back down against her body. Chuckling, he kisses down the soft fuzz of her stomach until he reaches her thicker curls, her pretty pussy. Everything feels good, even his aching cock against his wet suit pants. “What do you want?”

“I want you to suck on my hips, lightly touching my thighs.” She gasps, stroking his hair. “Just like that.” He nips at her for good measure, making sure to leave a nice little bruising reminder of their time tonight. “I want...I want you to touch me--there.”

“Where, Betty? If you can’t say it, I probably shouldn’t--”

Frustrated, Betty grips him roughly by the hair and pushes him against her slit. “Use your mouth on my clit, Jughead.”

Pressing a gentle kiss _there_, he backs up enough to smile for her. “With pleasure.”

He’s never tasted a woman like this before, but Betty smells oddly delicious. Testing, he flicks his tongue against her slit. Although she jumps, it doesn’t seem to be enough. He considers things he’s read--things he’s _seen_, what _Betty _might be reading in her teen romance novels.

Broad strokes earn him deep, guttural moans, her breasts rising as if she’s stretching to make room for him.

“Ooh, tell me how you like it, Betts.” Prying her thighs apart, Jughead starts suckling her in earnest.

“Slow at first...then...ah! Yes. Like that. You’re doing so good. Just keep licking like that. I want to get used to it.”

He snorts at that one. He’s pretty sure sex isn’t something you’re supposed to _get used to _but he listens to her anyway. The nice thing about being a dead bottomless pit is that he can basically unhinge his jaw and eat her out all night if he wants to. No need to take a breather.

Her little moans and “yes’s” spark a deeper hunger in him, so he grips her tighter and just buries his face in her wet heat, sloppy and ravenous and in lust.

“Fucking--ah! Jughead! Don’t stop!” Her nails fist into his hair, hips raising off the bed. As she rocks her hips onto his face, he realizes that she likes the pressure of his nose, his chin. She’s seeking it.

“Hold on for this one, babe,” he pants, diving back and rubbing every bit of his face all over her, only pausing to flick insistently at her swollen clit with every other pass.

The curses she shouts out are far better than any attached to his name, and when she comes, she’s bucking. It’s the wildest, hottest thing he’s ever been a part of.

Her eyes shut tight, thighs trembling. “I need--I want you inside of me.”

As much as he wishes she meant his aching, bobbing dick, he slides his fingers up and into her incredible, tight sheathe. It’s like she doesn’t want to let him go. He almost laughs about it, teeth grazing her clit. At her cry, he barely lessens the attention, only looking up to watch her pretty face contorted in rapture.

He did this.

She wants him. Not for his powers. For his _tongue. _For his wit. For his body instead of his corpse.

Humming, he plunges into her in a bruising rhythm. Her spine practically snaps up as she shouts his name. If anyone can hear them, they might think she’s being hammered. He likes that image. This one’s good too, even if she keeps humping his face so much that he ends up only being able to see her face and boobs on the occasional pass.

“Okay, stop. You did so good. Stop,” she begs, gasping as he pulls away and the rush of cool air hits her slick.

Licking off his chin, Jughead crawls over her body, grinning. “Was that how you read about it?”

“Better,” she moans, pawing at his still-soaked clothes. He can sort of _hear _her heartbeat jumping heavily. It’s relaxing. “Do ghosts sleep?”

“We rest.”

“Rest with me.” Her flushed body reaches up for the coolness of his.

“I gotta take care of something, babe. Hope you don’t mind if I use the bathroom for a bit.”

Balking, she releases her embrace. “Are you gonna have to poo right after we…?”

He laughs wildly, kissing and nipping her chest for the joke of it all. “Gotta handle a sausage situation. Figure if there’s a time to indulge, it’ll be my wedding night.”

“A _sausage situation? _Oh. You could...you could do it here. I don’t mind. I mean, you’ve seen me. I’m a little nervous to see _it_, but...I’m curious.”

“You want to see my dick or you want to see me come?”

“You make it sound like I’m some deviant.”

“You are,” he laughs, eventually giving in to her pleas and laying down beside her on the wet duvet. “These are Egyptian cotton sheets and you probably ruined them. Deviant.”

“I did _not_,” she flirts, turning onto her side to watch him through slightly hooded eyes. “Wasn’t there a ‘sausage’ that needed ‘handling’ as you so aptly put it?”

“Yeah.” He’s not feeling _shy_ so much as _exposed_ when he unbuttons his slacks, hand slipping under to tug on his prick through his underwear.

“You can take this off now,” she mumbles, pushing at his jacket.

“Oh, I can, now? _Thanks_.”

Betty ignores his sarcasm until he’s down to his clingy tank top, pants pulled off entirely. Although her gaze flickers down to where he’s jerking himself off, she keeps looking back up at his face under those long-as-fuck eyelashes. It makes him feel powerful, like she’s in lust or in love with him or something.

It’s weird.

But...so is her spreading her thighs, one leg looping through his. As she plays with her tits, he has to close his eyes, veins in his neck throbbing as a tightening sensation creeps up on him.

“Jughead.”

“Oh, god.”

She shifts closer, stroking his face. “Jughead.”

“Yes, Betty!”

This time all he needs is the warmth of her breath on his ear and he knows he’s there--he knows her breathy “Jughead” is enough.

After the high subsides, he lays beside her, still dizzy in his freedom.

“So do you think we’ll just live here now?” she jokes, picking at his tank top, absently stroking patterns that mimic some of the bruises he carries underneath.

“Why not, babe?” Something sort of kicks through his leg. A reminder. He’s supposed to do something. “Although after your mom went through all the trouble of redecorating…” Her laugh rings out loudly into the room. He kind of likes that better than the screams.

It’s actually kind of a delightful honeymoon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want fruit and chocolate and orgasms *sigh* Betty's a lucky bride, as far as that goes. Your thoughts are always very much appreciated - favorite moments, best part of the honeymoon, worst part, etc etc. Ready to see how their homecoming goes? Any predictions for the Andrews' and Cooper reunion? See you soon, babes! Thanks for the support and I'll update this in a bit ;)


	3. Predator

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I squishy emotional being? Why yes, yes I am. Thanks to my beta @jandjsalmon for checking on my words and things ^-^

They pop back into the house wearing somewhat less formal clothes. Penelope’s at the hospital trying to smooth things over with the Lodges and get patched up herself, according to a stuttering Hal, who keeps looking at Jughead like his face is going to erupt into a bunch of Scorpions or something. Just for kicks, he makes it happen, Hal screaming and falling back to his office.

The real fireworks start when the Andrews come thundering down, both of them embracing Betty like she was a kid they lost at the mall. His bride looks strangely relieved to be psuedo-hugged by some ghosts. “We’re so sorry. We thought we’d never see you again.”

Scoffing, Jughead hops up on the second story bannister. “You all worry too much.”

Mary shoots him a death glare. “_You _stay right there. We’ll try to get you out of this, sweetie. We’ve already talked to our...person in charge, Weatherbee, about the situation.”

“What _situation?_”

Shooting Jughead another sharp look, Mary takes a confused-looking Betty by the hand and leads her into a separate room as if that offers them privacy. He can still _hear _them. Newbie ghosts are so insensitive.

Fred looks distinctly uncomfortable. “Uh, thanks for the seance - for saving us, I mean. Mary and I have seen what happens to lost souls.”

All those husks floating in a void with less personality than they started with is enough to creep anyone out. They’ve got nothing but despair and desperation - no memories, just passing each day in a circle like some ghostly goldfish with a three-second memory.

_You’re welcome_ isn’t really in his vocabulary right now, especially for the Andrews’. It was all Betty’s doing, anyway. He got a marriage and a broken curse and the Andrews got to keep haunting this garish house. He doesn’t know why Betty even _wants_ to be back here. Worse, he doesn’t know why he came with her. Just being in this house makes his neck itch, reminded of his former shackles and the way the Andrews tried to put him on a leash. Taking a deep breath, he tries to listen to the girls in the other room and ignore the stupid old-timey song Hal is mumbling in the other room to comfort himself from the recent scare.

“He _kidnapped _you,” Mary insists.

“He teleported me away, yes. It was for a honeymoon after he fulfilled his promise to save you guys. It’s not like he strapped me to a chair or something; we were just hanging out in a hotel room.”

“Oh my god, did he–!”

“No! No, he wouldn’t–he’s not like that. Seriously, everything is fine.”

“It’s not _fine_! You agreed to marry him under duress and now...now you’re supposed to waste your youth and living years on a corpse who can’t even offer you a beating heart?”

Just for kicks, he snaps the illusion of a heart into the other room. Mary makes a noise in the vein of a squeal before sharply shouting, “_Jughead_!”

Snickering, he has it disappear. Fred tries to talk to him again. “What exactly _are _your intentions with Betty?”

“Intentions? Is this the daddy talk?”

Fred draws himself up to his full height, which is still almost half a foot under Jughead’s. “Maybe.”

Jughead straightens too, albeit with more of a squiggly mocking to the motion. “My _intentions_ are to get the hell out of this cursed town and get my vengeance to show for it.”

“And what about Betty?” For someone who got his ass soundly kicked every time he’s stood up to Jughead, Fred seems determined to poke him with a proverbial stick. “What is her role when you’re off causing chaos? Are you going to interfere in her life? Build and share one with her?” Snorting, Jughead almost answers when Mary’s derision and Fred’s sincerity overlap. “We know what she asked you for. Even if she’s...confused right now, you shouldn’t take advantage of her. She’s young. She’s vulnerable. I know you’re a mischief maker, but we just want to make sure you’re not acting like a predator.”

Fuming, Jughead screams at him in the form of _The Predator_ from the movie of his youth, some alien freak. While Fred’s reeling, Jughead switches back to his normal form. “Predatory enough for you?” Pulling at his suit, he tries not to look in Betty’s direction behind the door. “I’d love to stay, but I have a _full _day of cradle-robbing ahead of me.”

In the background he can hear Betty protesting something about, “_It’s not like I’ll be missing out on any high school boys, anyway_. _He’s funny and cute and–_”

Whatever’s in his chest feels like snakes wreathing together.

Mary’s firm _mom_-tone interrupts. “Unstable? Listen, Betty, I know guys with attitude can be alluring, but Jughead is _dangerous_.”

That’s the whole reason they called on him in the first place. Isn’t that sort of inherently his value in the afterlife?

“I’m not scared of him,” Betty says flatly.

“I’m not saying you should be. That ghoul attacked your family and you managed to hit him with a shoe.”

Jughead frowns, rubbing the side of his head. Like _Mary _has any room to talk about ridiculous attempts to haunt the Cooper family after she _hired _him to do it. At least _he_ caused some chaos and legitimate fear. Betty could stand toe-to-toe with his badass without pissing herself or screaming his name in a tantrum.

Still jilted from the scare, Fred crosses his arms and stands in front of Jughead like the weakest barrier possible. “We’d appreciate it if you left Betty to her own devices until we figure this thing out.”

“Listen, Qausimodo, you can tell your dolls to act however you want in that tiny town of yours, but you have jack shit on a powerful ghoul and a teenage girl who can probably find a way to kick _my _ass to get what she wants.”

Fred looks conflicted, voice lowering. “I just don’t want her to get hurt.”

“Then don’t hurt her,” Jug suggests, bending over exaggeratedly like they’re conspiring little campers around a bonfire.

“I won’t! But you–you do that for a living! You push people to the edge, you prey on their fears!”

“First of all, I can’t really make a _living _if I’m already dead,” he counts off. “Secondly, Betty is hardly _prey_. The only thing she might be scared of is how _charming _I am. Obviously.” He opens his arms to show off his blazer and bruises.

Fred shakes his head, jaw clenched. “She’s just being nice.”

“And you’re..._not, Dad._”

Jughead flips him off with a garish grin as he snaps out of their fake perfect house.

Like he needs to deal with holier-than-thou attitudes from ghosts so obsessed with maintaining their aesthetic after death that they hired an exorcist.

And why are they treating him like some fucking pariah and predator when she’s _happy_? At least, relatively happy.

Betty isn’t _just a teen_. She’s smarter than anybody he’s ever met. Calls him on his shit. Lets him eat and play and…

No one else sees him like that.

He’s still dead.

He’s still pissed.

He’s just not as...limited.

His stomach gurgles as he walks along the road. Maybe it _is _time he paid the Ghoulies’ hideout a visit, but he needs time to collect himself on the way. He doesn’t want to pop in while he’s all steamed about the _predator _comment.

Everything in Riverdale looks so _similar_ to when he last saw it. The fresh air aggravates his wounds, even though they’re covered. That sucks. He thought the fucking sunshine and breeze would be good for him and yet he still feels aggravated.

Itching at his chest, he feels a wound reopen. At least he’s got another shirt over his stupid white tank top so the blood that clings to it isn’t visible. He doesn’t feel like bothering with much of a mirage today.

He spits onto Riverdale’s spoil. Part of him hopes he poisons Sweetwater River somehow. He looks up at the sky. The infinite unknown. Makes him really want a Pop’s burger.

Maybe with a side of revenge.

He lingers near Pickens Park, the scene of his murder. It doesn’t look anything like the bloodbath of that night. There are families walking around. _Ducks_ in the pond. Some dogs bark at him and he’s tempted to flip them off. Although if he had their sense of smell, he’d probably find himself revolting, too.

Nobody looks at him. They probably can’t see him, the living, not when he’s strange and unusual as always. It’s not _that _much different than when he was alive.

It just feels..._weird_. Being here should be more momentous - maybe the ground could crack open and hellfire would erupt or the Ghoulies’ awful muscle cars would screech up, their hands full of molotov cocktails and lit cigarettes. One breeze and he could take out the whole lot of them.

But it’s not like that at all. In fact, he kind of remembers coming here with Jellybean for Pickens Day to get taffy apples even though she was at a stage where she had like three missing teeth. It makes him hungry for something sweet, makes him wonder why he didn’t put apples in the fruit sampler with Betty.

_You can’t exorcise feelings_, Betty’d said.

Maybe she should be a shrink. Although based on how much she’s already trying to help the Andrews’, it’s more likely she’d be taking on things like a social worker. A guidance counselor? Whatever she is, she’d be better at it than that useless, unimaginative stick-in-the-mud Weatherbee.

Being in the park is okay. He barks back at dogs, steals from picnic baskets, chases the ducks. He’s itchy, but not crazed. There’s no rush on his revenge, anyway. The House of the Dead can burn another day.

Or tonight.

Tonight is good.

After playing fetch with literal bones for the dogs and laughing about the owners’ baffled reactions, Jughead cruises through Fox Forest to find the old Ghoulie house.

He’s not sure how it could still be standing in its usual decrepit state, but it is. One would think they’d at least add some new shingles to the roof. _Something_. They’ve still got the same stupid Rastafarian and American flags in the windows instead of curtains. Shaking out some indefinable tension, Jughead shifts into his old clothes. Plaid shirt around his waist. Jeans. Tank top. No leather...not yet.

As he raps on the door, he feels energy bouncing through him, but it’s weirdly contained.

“Here we are now, _entertain us_…” he taunts, not really caring if they can hear him or not. It brings him comfort to hear his favorite grunge tunes again. He can _almost_ picture his family hammering on the trailer walls for him to turn it down. The glory of walkmans.

Someone he doesn’t recognize answers the door, sleepy-eyed and definitely fogged out. They’re too young to have been party to his murder.

“Ssspecial delivery.” Jughead smirks, loving the way the s’s vibrate on his tongue in anticipation of a snake moment.

“For who?”

“Malachai and friends.”

“Did you just get out or something?”

Jughead blinks in surprise, baring his fangs over a forced smile. “You could say that.”

They youth rubs the back of their neck, stepping back as though they’re not sure if they’re hallucinating and don’t want to make a big deal out of it. “They’re not here. Mal was like an uncle to me, but his pals all got busted or killed.”

“Killed?” Jughead hisses, furious. He can practically _feel_ the blood oozing up out of his wounds.

The kid scratches the back of their head. “I think we have some pizza if you want some. We could talk about old times, I guess. Sorry.”

“Pizza?! _Pizza_?! I’m…” Furious, Jughead moves into the house, finding nothing but ring-stained coffee tables and typical family living. This isn’t the den of sin he was promised. The assholes were probably just too lazy to get new curtains.

“What are you…?”

With a flick of the wrist, Jughead transforms the Rastafarian flag to one of a giant middle finger, adds another one with his basquiat crown, and fills the pantry with canned snakes. Live ones? No, toy ones...only a little alive, he thinks. He adds slices of ghost peppers to their sloppy joe meat sitting on the stove. On the wall, he carves his token crown, a _Jughead Jones wuz here_ to wound this haunted house.

He’s just so…

“_Disappointed!_”

Waving his arms, everything crashes, and he doesn’t know how long it is until he’s in the library trying to look shit up on a computer with internet that is _crazy _fast...like a snap of his fingers.

Almost all of the people whose names he knew from the massive beating are already dead.

“Fuck!” he curses, shoving the damn computer over and watching it smoke. His hair is a mess of knots that only greasy fingers seem to be able to untangle. “I’m sorry, it’s not your fault,” he amends to the broken technology, not wanting to touch it and fuck it up more.

People are staring, confused at the outburst, but he doesn’t give a shit about keeping up appearances. Let them realize this stupid town’s bathed in bloodshed and bullshit.

He almost wants to tear his hair out, set the Andrews’ tiny town on fire and stomp on everything he’s been dreaming about for _decades_.

Jughead screams.

There’s no way to find them or where they’ve been haunting unless he goes to the fucking Neitherworld office and waits half a century for his number to be called, and even then they’d probably say it was private. Unless he sneaks in. Or unless someone else already has an appointment he can take over. An _emergency_.

_His brand of chaos might be its own emergency - even his matrimony._

Jughead swarms back into the Cooper house, bypassing Hal, who shakes his paper so hard at the intrusion that it goes flying to the floor. With a haphazard wave, Jug picks it back up for him and slams into random rooms until he stumbles upon Betty’s.

It’s light pink, which he’d find _abysmal_, but apparently she’s fought to keep the color, probably for Mary’s sake. At least there are some band posters on the walls–some, he recognizes from his own albums back in the day.

“Jug?” Betty jerks up from the spot she’d curled into on the bed, her laptop splayed on the comforter. Her face is paler than usual, drawn. “Where have you been?”

“I went to the park.”

“You went to the park?”

“Yeah, I–” She tosses a pink pillow at him. It puffs in his hand as he catches it. “What?”

“I was worried that you _left_ me!”

“After one night? _Permanently? _I may not know much about relationships but I’m not _that_ bad.” He underhands the pillow onto the edge of the bed as she swings her leg out, skirt hiking up her thighs. “Did you miss me?”

“I had no way of calling you–”

“Hey, you knew the curse–”

“I meant _actually _calling you! On the phone!” She pushes off the side of the bed and gives him a once-over. “Are you okay? I’m guessing the Andrews were kind of–”

“Jerks?”

She gives him a _look_, tugging at the seams of his shirt.

“What? It’s true. I know they dress like hipster farmers so you think they’re harmless, but–”

“I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Her sincerity makes him squirm, especially when she wraps her arms around his neck and holds him.

_Holds him._

Wrapping his arms around her, Jughead squeezes her tightly, patting her back and twisting her hair in reassurance. “You won’t get rid of me that easily, babe.”

She looks up with a big smile. It makes something in his gut tango.

“Wanna make out? Or–”

Sighing, she buries her forehead against his shirt. “Why did you go to the park?”

“It’s the last place I was alive.” That’s not what he meant to say. It’s the place of his murder, but the way it’d been so obnoxiously sunny and suburban, the _alive _bit feels more accurate than the other reality. “Then I went to Ghoulie HQ and the guys I wanted to exorcise have already split.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

When she scratches his scalp behind his ears it makes him want to hump her leg a little. “I _want_ it, Betty. I _want_ what I paid for.”

“What? What do you want?”

“Vengeance! I wanna see the terror in their eyes as they recognize me for what I am!”

“What you are?” She frowns, puzzled.

“_I’m their worst fucking nightmare_! I’m everyone’s nightmare! Can’t you see that? Beyond broken bones and a bloody lip, I’m the guy they see and think they can exterminate. The cockroach of Riverdale. Now _I _am the one who does the exterminating, and I do it with _style! _I’ll write my own goddamn tragedy.”

“Juggie, you’re so much more than a tragedy,” she says softly, caressing his face. It’s too weird. His gut is still drumming his insides, the bottomless pit straining to get more.

“Really? Local youth gets beaten to death in the park by a gang isn’t a tragedy?” Edging away from her feels like pulling at a cracked rib. Maybe there was something to that whole Adam and Eve origin bullshit.

“That’s not what I meant. Of course your death was a traumatic, horrible experience, but look where you are now.”

“A tacky-ass house full of narrow-minded, cookie-cutter plebeians who can’t fix any of their own problems so they try to ‘fix’ someone else.”

She backs up like he’s slapped her. The glossiness over her eyes feels like drainer fluid going down his throat.

“I didn’t mean _you_.”

She runs her hands along her ponytail, gaze bouncing past him and around the room like she’s trying to find something to hold onto. “I guess we’re both saying things we don’t mean. I just thought...I don’t know, I thought maybe I could help you.”

“I’m _not _one of your _projects_,” he insists, gesturing wildly because he has to do something with all this energy he’s been building up for years now that he can’t unleash it on the people who deserve it. “I’m _dead_. There’s no coming back from that, okay?”

“_Okay_. I just thought–”

“I know what you thought. I’m not some undead vampire boyfriend who wants to cry blood tears to you about how life and death are hard and make out with you after, okay? I want to find my ‘friends’ and kill the shit out of them–_again_, if necessary. You are married a vengeful exterminator corpse. Is that _processing _for you?”

Her voice trembles but she stares him down anyway. “And you are _married _now, which means that you have a _partner_ in me. Is that processing for _you_?”

“_I’m not your responsibility!_”

“Yes, you really are!”

He hates the way this feels: burning, creeping up his neck and forging his fangs. It’s like he’s torn between saying something scathing and shoving his tongue down her throat. He makes a noise halfway between a screaming curse and a restrained grunt, hands out like he’s going to grab her by the shoulders and shake her.

Looking equally as frustrated, Betty crosses her arms across her chest. “What do you want? Closure? I’ll help you get closure.”

“Ven-geance,” he annunciates.

“I’m calling it closure.”

“Call it whatever you want, babe. But I want Malachai’s head on a stick ready to toast in the hellfire.”

She takes a deep breath, craning her neck back as if she’s checking if some kind of heaven is listening in on their conversation. “What’s his last name?”

“What?”

“I’ll look him up online, try to figure out where he died or what he wanted. If we can figure out his curse, we can probably track him down.”

He cracks a grin. “Betty Cooper. You little devil.” She shrugs, clearly still upset with him. “As much as the Nancy Drew thing turns me on, I was planning on stealing his file in the Neitherworld. Since our union and the Andrews will most likely have us _summoned_ for investigation, there might be an opening to steal those case files. Or maybe I could make the Andrews do it if I promise to animate all of Red’s sculptures to run away.”

She frowns. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Just come on the bed with me and we’ll start poking around.”

It’s the phrasing’s fault for the way his hands wander up her dress, stroking her underwear.

“Jughead,” she whispers, kicking at him and glaring at the door. “There are people around here! Some who can literally walk through walls. We can’t just go at it…”

“First of all, the Andrews’ are still too green to know how to pop in places. Secondly, am I gonna have to take you to the penthouse every time I want to play?”

“Naked? Um, probably.”

Groaning, he plants his face on her thigh and listens to the hurried click of keys. When she doesn’t fuss with him, he gets comfy at looks up at her face, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Babe. We just had our first fight.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I think we handled it pretty well.”

A soft, annoyed exhale is all he gets to that one.

“I think we should make up...and maybe make out.”

She looks down at him, exasperated, and caresses his cheek. “Does being dead affect your attention span?”

“Maybe.” He kisses the inside of her palm, steadying her in the resulting surprised flinch. His wife is soft and warm.

After a moment too long of staring into each other’s eyes, she turns back to the computer screen. “I found some things on the murder of a...well, a guy whose last name is _Jones_. Am I on the right track?”

“Yeah.” He keeps kissing her hand, sucking on her fingers hoping to find some salt. “Don’t say the first name, although I’m sure it’s something you’ll hold onto. That was a whole other curse.”

“It says here you have a sister.”

He turns his head away so the screen isn’t visible. “Had.”

“Do family relationships not mean anything once you die?”

Jughead’s throat feels tight. “I can’t imagine who she is now or that she’d appreciate me haunting around. It was literally another life. It doesn’t even feel real. It’d be like revisiting a dream. I’m not sad about it. I mean, it’s _sad_. Who knows how she fared with two deadbeat parents and one brother who was beaten to death?” He snorts at the coincidence. “Our dog was probably the next best parental figure.”

She cards her fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp and making him moan. “What was your dog’s name?”

“Hot Dog.” Her giggle makes him look up. “What?”

“I don’t know, it’s just kind of funny.” He folds his arms indignantly across his chest. _Hot Dog _was a very noble name in the Jones household, passed down through generations - far luckier than the other bullshit name they passed around. Betty bites her lip, confessing, “I had a cat named Caramel. What are the odds that we would both name our pets after foods?”

“A girl after my own heart,” he muses, pressing a kiss to her thigh. It’s so comfortable here, relaxing in her lap. Maybe he can get her some striped tights or little heart ones. There are so many colors he hasn’t seen on her yet and he _wants _to. He wants to see everything.

Jughead rolls over, pushing the computer aside and crawling onto Betty’s lap to stare at her lips up close. “So what’s the new lead, brainiac?”

“We can try the bridge where Malachai crashed or the garage they worked on their muscle cars.”

“He died drag racing? Dumbass.” He can feel his lip split a little more when he grins, gooey blood dripping down his chin.

His wife eyes him with uncertainty. “Glad that put you in a better mood. Let’s head to the bridge first, I guess.”

Hand in hand, they exit her room like two lovesick teenagers about to go on a date. Betty leans into the attic stairwell.

“We’re going for a walk down by Pickens Point! Be back tonight! Let me know if you need any more supplies and we’ll-”

“Hey!” Jughead protests, tugging on her arm. “This is a vengeance/reconnaissance mission, not an errand to the hobby shop.”

“It’s on the way,” she reasons.

“Thanks, Betty! We’ll see you soon. Be careful!” Fred calls back from the attic.

Satisfied, she smiles at him. “See? It’s called diplomacy. You should try it some time.”

“Pshyeah. I’m sure that works _real _well on Red.”

Betty rolls her eyes, vaguely waving at her father as they pass. “Bye, Dad. I’m going out with Jughead.”

Hal widens his eyes, forehead wrinkling. “Um, right. Do you need…dinner? I’ll order some takeout just in case he doesn’t kill us before then.”

“Thanks.” Her sarcasm rolls under Jughead’s skin and keeps him warm. The whole scenario is so endearingly bizarre that he almost gives Hal his order, but he guesses he can always snap something into existence.

Once they’re outside, Jughead brings Betty’s knuckles to his lips. “M’lady? Would you prefer a carriage, a walk, or a snappy summons?”

“I’m scared to even _ask _what kind of carriage you mean.” He snaps, a souped-up, undead version of his motorcycle appearing before them. “Impressive.” The leather seat practically purrs under her experimental touch. “As much as I’d like to ride, I think for now we ought to do something that wouldn’t look like I was flying in the air to the _living _folks.”

“But think of the _fun _you could have.” He tucks his chin into her neck, hugging her from behind. “Freak the hell out of your neighbors.”

“Tempting…”

“So?” He places a wet kiss on her neck.

“Fine. Let’s be freaks.”

_Hell yes, _he thinks.

He hasn’t had a _real _open road to work with for a _while_. “I hope I remember how to drive this thing,” he teases, revving the engine as she clambers behind him.

“Hilarious. Just try to not get pulled over, okay?”

“Whatever you say, babe.”

The thrusters take off with all the ceremony of the rock n’ roller coaster. Betty squeals and tightens her grip on him, crushing his sternum and ribs in a wonderfully painful jolt that makes him feel _alive_. The wind in his hair, his wife at his back, an engine thrumming under his legs.

This is what he _wants_.

Adrenaline shaking through him, Jughead zooms through the streets of Riverdale, leaving smoke in their wake. As they approach Pickens Point, he almost wants to summon a ramp. To do a jump, a trick, to take over the world and burst out of the town lines victorious against whatever invisible opponent has tried to suppress him his whole life.

Betty’s arms tighten around his ribs, pain seeping into his lungs. Hers? His? The blur of colors tilts on its access as he slides the bike to a stop, Betty’s thighs squeezing his.

“We’re _here_.” Maybe later he can do an Evil Kenevil bit, assuming anyone besides her is here to see it or would even _get _the reference. Fluffing his hair, he tries to wild it up. “How do I look?”

“Cute. But intimidating,” she assures him, tweaking his hair a little more.

This whole _fawning _thing makes him feel twitchy. He’s not supposed to be _cute_. Spinning his hair again, making his wife crack a smile, Jughead gestures to the surrounding area. “I doubt Mal’s even here. Honestly, if he wasn’t haunting the hideout, I’m not sure why he’d be–”

“This is really pretty.”

He stops gesturing at the pit below the bridge, focusing instead on his girl. Skirt in hand, she walks to the edge of the bridge, the wind gently blowing in her hair. It’s picturesque, really. He wishes he had a camera, snapping one into existence as an afterthought to take a polaroid of her profile. She’s haunting in the best way possible. “If he had to choose a place to die, this wouldn’t be so bad.”

A knot twists in his stomach. He flaps the polaroid still and tucks it into his jacket pocket for safekeeping. “So you’re still on that?”

“No, I’m just saying. This is where the Andrews died.”

“Really?”

She nods. “I looked it up once I found out their names. They swerved to avoid a dog and ended up crashing their car. They don’t even remember the bad part of it. This bridge, whether it’s cursed or just a coincidence, has a long history. A lot of memories.” Turning, she looks off to the trees, to Sweetwater, just beyond. “But no ghosts here. None that I can see.”

Part of him wishes he could hold her close, share a heartbeat. “You’re probably right. The view’s too pretty to count as part of a centuries-long torture. We’re much more likely to find him haunting a rest stop men’s room. _Those _places are scary.” She laughs, her face warm with a kind of flickering glow. He slips his arm around her, holding up the polaroid camera in one hand. “Mind if I take a picture?”

“Will you show up in it?” She looks dubious and he remembers the ridiculous sheet-covered nothingness of the Andrews’ polaroids. But he’s not like _them_ \- not _really_.

“One way to find out. Say..._Showtime!_” Her smile is worthy of a flash. The sheet pops out and he presents her with its edge. “Would you like to do the honors?”

“Such a gentleman.” Carefully pulling the polaroid out of the lip, Betty shakes the gray image until their grinning faces come into view, the landscape behind them. His face is a little obscured, glowing some of his features out (probably because he’s _dead_) but he looks..._happy_. Like shit, but happy. So does she. Maybe she’s a little tired, but she’s still the prettiest girl in the world - and far happier than he ever thought someone could be with _him_...at least since that picture of him and Jelly when they were in grade school. “Can I keep it?” she asks.

Although part of him wants to tuck it away in his pocket, he shrugs it off. “Of course.”

“Will you–um, I know this may sound silly, and I know you said you aren’t just running off, but...will you be living with me?”

He doesn’t even know where to _start _processing the question. “Hard to live with someone when you’re dead.”

“I mean,” she sighs, playing with her skirts a little nervously. “Will you stay with me? Haunt, as it were? I don’t want to interfere with your newfound freedom, but...is what’s mine yours and what’s yours mine...that kind of thing? Because I’m–I’d probably like that. We don’t have to stay in Riverdale for all of eternity, I was just...wondering.”

“Wondering,” he repeats, letting the camera fall to his chest. “Oh, you _like _me. You’d miss me, is what you’re saying.”

She avoids looking him in the eye. “Well, yeah. Who else am I gonna hang out with in this town?”

“Friends?” he offers, raising his eyebrows. A pretty girl like her - it _has _to be natural, even with her self-imposed _strange and unusual _vibe.

Her smile is wry, beyond her years. “It’s not so easy.” She rubs the mesh material of her dress between her fingers, the sound constant, grating. “People aren’t exactly eager to hang out with me when I don’t meet their expectations.”

“What expectations?”

“Straight-A student. Bitchy emo chick. _Blonde_.”

“Well you meet _that _one, at least.”

Her heart’s not in her smile. “I guess. It’s just like...no matter how many times I try to connect, it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t stay.”

_I’d stay_, he almost chimes in, pointedly spinning his wedding ring. He wonders how anyone could sever their bond to someone so wholly brilliant and charismatic.

She looks down. “My friends from back home distanced themselves as soon as I wasn’t ‘doing it’ for them. Being sad isn’t great for a social life, I guess. Checking on the group chats is like listening to another life - another _channel_ that’s ninety percent static. None of it’s real.” Her gaze drifts out to Sweetwater River, glimmering with the sunset.

He wonders if that's how it'd be to reconnect with JB - with _anybody. _It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. He's here right now. He's with Betty. They're pretty happy, considering everything.

“What irony, coming from a girl who commiserates with ghosts,” he jokes, trying to lighten the mood.

“Yeah, but you _are_ real.” Her ponytail twirls and her eyes curve up like sideways crescent moons. “You’re substantial. I don’t think anyone’s imagination is good enough to dream you up.”

Chest puffing with pride, Jughead shrugs. “Maybe if they’d guzzled enough Fizzle Rocks.” Her chuckle just makes the world seem wider - more open and clear. He flicks his jacket, waggling his eyebrows. “Care to test out my _substantialness_?”

“Not right now. I’m feeling melancholy.” The moment he bristles, she stiffens, eyes going wide. “Not that you being here isn’t helpful, because it is. Sometimes my mind just wanders places unknown and the sadness seeps in.”

He remembers afternoons in Pop’s, surrounded by families, kids on dates, even the random single diner like himself. All he had was his laptop and a server who seemed to understand that he didn’t have a real home to go back to.

“You’re deep, babe. It’s kind of depressing.”

“Maybe you like that.” She shrugs, her lipstick faded to a faint pink.

“_Maybe _I do.” There’s a theatricality to the way they take their steps to close the distance between them. His steps are jaunty, legs winding out to the side; hers are straightforward, an eerily elegant march. Whatever she’s waiting for, it feels like death. A shroud. “Would you even like me if I wasn’t some dapper, deviant ghoul? Seems like you have a thing for the dead.” Although he’s smirking, there’s a twitch to it. A warning under his skin.

She can probably hurt him.

There’s a shadow in the green of her eyes, a monster of the deep. The flicker of its tail makes him want to take the question back, to hold her and let them have _this_ instead. Their ill-conceived fantasy of a happily ever after, him with a broken curse and her with a husband/friend who doesn’t like - who can rarely even be seen by - anyone else.

It’s a mean thought, but it’s one lurking, nonetheless.

“I’m not in love with the idea of death, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

_Who said anything about love?_ His ribs crackle and shift, trying to resist the urge to expand to make room for whatever that feeling even _is, _to turn into his snake form and _squeeze _her until she admits how she really feels.

Feelings don’t matter once you’re dead. Not really. They _shouldn’t_.

Still, he baits, “So what are you in love with?”

Betty abruptly looks down. “I don’t know.”

Her denial stirs something in him. A dare. “You don’t?”

She rocks back, eyeing the horizon and the bridge in a way that makes him nervous.

“Well damn, don’t throw yourself off the edge for it. It’s just a feeling. A verb. Like _catch_.” He hoists her up in his arms, easily enduring her little kicks.

“Jughead!” She pauses just before she’s about to thwack his chest, remembering the camera. “One more picture, then we try the garage?”

“Fine, and if there are no Ghoulies lurking, can we go to Pop’s?” He bounces her a little, enjoying the way her ponytail sways. “It’s been a long fucking day. I could really go for a milkshake.”

“Okay.”

Kissing her doesn’t make him feel _alive_, necessarily, but it does make him feel like _living_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Foreshadowing! Cuddling! How do you feel about the way the family is fighting/coming together? There's a lot more of that in the coming chapters too. Your comments make me feel all lovely and I do hope to hear some of your thoughts. Jughead's feeling prickly about the Andrews interfering and Betty's taking her marital responsibility pretty seriously. Partners in shenanigans, babes!


	4. Schooled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snakes, school, and singalongs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning - sexy things ahead. Proceed with...party hats! Breakfast! Dance moves! Alrighty then!

He’s laying on his side, Betty tucked under one arm, wondering if his wife will exorcise him if he keeps touching her like this. The silk of her thighs has been distracting him for hours. The caress is so soothing that he’s surprised she doesn’t stroke herself any time she gets the chance. Miraculously, she’s still asleep, hopefully not having nightmares about the chaos and carnage he caused in the garage when two Ghoulies were haunting the place.

Eventually, they’ll put themselves back together. He’s not too worried about it. Although Betty had seemed confused and slightly alarmed by the dismembered body parts littering the garage, she managed not to freak out or alarm the mechanics who couldn’t see anything of the strange mayhem unfolding around them.

Betty looks absolutely angelic, blonde hair splayed across the pillow. He bends down and kisses her forehead, mouths at her hair. The hunger deep in his gut seems temporarily sated and has been since Pop’s, where she tucked so neatly under his arm and shared a strawberry milkshake with him.

Maybe all the stupid teenage things that were robbed of him are coming back. Milkshake dates. Fooling around for hours. Long drives and longer talks.

He’s turning into a sap.

With a big sigh, Jughead rolls closer against her warm body and lets his fingers stray from their pattern on her thighs to over her underwear. She stirs, moaning, and he wishes he had the power to get into her dreams. Smirking against her neck, he rubs in slow circles, then back and forth, enjoying the way her legs shift for friction of him even in sleep.

She wakes up with a jerk. “I have school tomorrow,” she whispers.

“I know, babe.” He kisses her neck. “You want me to stop?”

Groaning, she widens her legs. “No. But now I need to finish before I can go back to sleep.”

“I think I can work with that.”

She comes with his fingers deep inside her heat and his hand clamped hard over her mouth. Maybe she’s his new outlet for gluttony. Every time he smells her arousal he wants to slide his tongue across her skin. He’s never been remotely this horny outside of some dirty dreams so it’s kind of refreshing to _want _someone instead of wanting to rip their arms off and beat them with them.

Anyway. She looks pretty cute in her school uniform.

“I thought you said they judged you for wearing all black.” He frowns, tugging at her pleats before she whacks his hand away.

“My first day, they did, because I didn’t have my uniform.” She brushes and tugs her hair into place, the whole process weirdly fascinating to him. Maybe he’s just been dead for too long. With a big sigh, she regards herself in the mirror, seemingly _fine _if not _thrilled _with the necessity of conformity for the sake of school. “I’m going down for breakfast. Coming?”

“Only if you’re swallowing.” His chest tightens at the instinctual perviness that seems to follow whenever he’s interacting with Betty. “Sorry. Um, no. You enjoy breakfast with Mom and Dad and I’ll go poke around Pickens Park.”

“Okay. Try not to dismember anything,” she chides, bending down to peck his hungry, insatiable mouth.

He watches the way her skirt kisses the back of her thighs as she leaves.

Although he has every intention of leaving, he can’t help but linger upstairs, listening to the cheery way she greets the Andrews. They discuss the beauty of the town and she relates seeing the bridge with Jughead. He leans against her doorway, affection brewing in his gut. He wants to swirl her hair. Touch her knee. Instead, he plays with his ring, remembering the way the Andrews called him a predator - an exterminator - someone who makes people go away.

Whatever. It’s not like he needs breakfast with her all the time anyway. It’s stifling having to live with all these incompatible weirdos.

Just as he’s about to dig through her room or snap somewhere else, he hears Hal tentatively come out of his office. “Betty? Is that you?”

“In here, Dad. I’m just talking to the Andrews.”

“Oh! Hi. I’m Hal.”

No one says anything. Jughead snorts out laughter.

There’s no way Hal isn’t shuffling towards the table and waving to what he views as an empty room save for his daughter.

“They know who you are, Dad. They’ve been haunting the place since we moved in. Since they died, really.”

A chair squeaks against the tile. “What should I say to them? Oh! Sorry about the seance. Hope you’re less...crumbly...today.”

“Is this a legitimate apology?” Mary balks.

“I’d like to start over. Hal Cooper. I love the house you’ve built.”

A pause. Fred’s uncertain, “Thanks?” makes Jughead cough-laugh behind a fist.

“Fred says thanks,” Betty says derisively, digging back into her breakfast.

“Oh, great! I’m so glad you can be our little translator, muffin,” Hal says affectionately. Jughead can hear Betty swatting his hands away - maybe from her hair? The urge to _know _is enough to have him creeping around the bannister as a tiny snake, hoping no one notices him hanging as long as he doesn’t draw attention to himself. Betty’s still smoothing her fluffy ponytail and giving her dad some serious side-eye by the time the family pops into view.

“I can’t stay. I have school.”

“Oh, I’ll tell you what, when I’m done with work, I’ll get out my home movies and show the Andrews a little bit more about our family! That should be fun! Maybe I can get a whiteboard so they can write things on it. Or the music thing was pretty entertaining if they prefer to communicate that way. Put some pep back in my step.”

Betty chokes on her cereal.

“Are you okay?” Mary asks, slamming on her back.

“Yeah. Just–imagining possession-dance parties becoming a regular part of the Cooper routine.” She clears her throat, shaking her head. “Not exactly what I expected when moving to a small town.”

Mary, to her credit, takes it in stride, smirking at the teen. “You’d be surprised what us small-towners can do. Any requests?”

Fred sits up in excitement. “How about The Proclaimers? _Oh, I would walk five-hundred miles!”_

“Oh, here we go.” Mary sighs, annoyance and amusement fighting for dominance. “My eternity with a man who always wanted to be in a band.”

Fred is entirely undeterred, shoulders bopping to the song. “_Oh I would walk five hundred more!_”

Giggling, Betty covers her mouth.

“What’s happening? Are they into the music idea?” Hal asks eagerly, eyes and eyebrows rounded.

“_Yeah_. _Super _into it.” Her sarcasm is _pure _teenager and Jughead _loves _her for it.

“Don’t get them started,” Mary chides, rubbing her temples.

Moving to the living room, Hal pokes at his phone, clearly trying to set up the BlueTooth speakers haphazardly placed by their television. “What’s he singing?”

“500 Miles?”

“No!” Mary insists just as Fred cheers, “Yes!”

The music starts up, Hal bouncing on his knees, gaze sweeping around the room. Then, to Jughead’s surprise, Hal and Fred start singing along. It’s awful. Jughead almost _prays _for them to do a possession just so he can hear the actual vocal track come out of their mouths instead of _this._ Hal’s awkward and off-key, Fred’s closing his eyes and crooning like he’s a rock star, and Mary looks like she wants to throw her wedding ring out the window. The enthusiasm gets to them. Betty grins, her eyebrows climbing in disbelief as Fred manages to get Mary onto her feet to dance. It mostly involves shaking back and forth. They send the rocking chair and some local furniture into the same kind of rhythm, much to Hal’s excitement. The whole thing is fucking _weird_.

Jughead’s seen a lot of things, but nothing even comes close to this.

Shaking his head, Jughead sways his snakey body on the banister, purposely dropping into the fruit bowl with a celebratory splatter that has Hal screaming at the chorus, “And, _AHHHH!_”

“Would walk…” Fred continues, barely noticing the fine spray of juice on Betty and the table. The impact was just as glorious as the gall, but nowhere near as satisfying as Betty’s shocked face.

“What...the _hell_?” She laughs, gingerly plucking him from the carnage. He slithers along her fingers, crawling up her arm and nuzzling to the heat of her neck. “You’re the biggest weirdo.”

Mary’s flushed and glaring, but Fred seems nonplussed. “Good morning, Jughead.”

He hisses, neutral, in response. Hal’s heart is probably still in his throat because he’s frozen, eyes wide in terror.

“I better get to school before there’s any more carnage.” Betty clears her bowl and starts wiping down the table. Jughead almost feels guilty that she has to clean up. There are snapping powers he could use to help her but he’d have to give himself hands again for that. As she tosses the wet paper towels, he loops casually around her neck. “Have a good day, everyone!”

He rattles his tail at them behind her back, sticking out his tongue, then tickling her with it.

“Stop.” More swatting, then stroking, to calm him. “You can’t stay on me as a snake all day, you know.”

He wonders if he can just stay _on _her. Eventually, though, he has to talk to the Andrews about Malachai’s case file. Maybe once the stickiness has settled. He coils comfortably on Betty’s shoulders and hisses, almost purring when she strokes his scales.

“This look is very Britney Spears circa early 2000s,” she muses, smiling. He has a vague idea of what she’s talking about, but not _really_. The way she scratches under his chin and offers his snakey lips a chaste kiss distracts him. He can’t imagine anything beyond these little affections. He blames the reptile brain.

“Are you sticking with me for a while?” She knocks up the kickstand on her bicycle.

“We’re married. You’re ssstuck with me forever,” he hisses, taunting. “Why don’t you let me give you a ride?”

“Nah. I can’t let you spoil me _all _the time.” She taps his nose and climbs onto the seat. “Hold on.”

Laying on her as a necklace of sorts is actually kind of fun, especially with the light breeze on his scales and the tinkling bell she uses to announce when she’s turning corners in their small town. It’s a lot different than the motorcycle. In fact, he can’t remember if he’s ever _really _ridden a bicycle. If the old adage about _never forgetting how to ride a bike_ is true, then he supposes he hasn’t.

He twists, looking at the park, Pop’s, the school.

“Fun ride?” she asks, leisurely hopping off and locking the bike.

“Interesssting perssspective.”

“As much as I love the snakey scarf look, I can’t go into class like this. People are going to ask questions.”

“_If _they even noticccce.”

She lets out an exasperated laugh. “Can you control that?”

“Sssort of.” _Maybe._

“Just...don’t get me in trouble, okay?”

He licks her skin and she squirms.

“Jerk. I’m gonna find a mongoose one of these days…”

“You’d murder your own _husssband_?”

“You’re already dead,” she reminds him cheekily, striding right up to the school doors. Grumbling, he subdues his presence so her loser classmates don’t see anything. He doesn’t know why he’s still hanging around. School was never exactly a party - even if he did enjoy his English classes. Maybe he’s just curious.

Thankfully, Betty strokes him a little bit to ease his nerves and carries on with her day. Homeroom is fine. She keeps to herself before class and takes notes during social studies, Jughead rattling during the exciting parts.

Betty tries and fails to hide her smile when he adds some rather colorful commentary. But class is boring. Jughead slithers down into her lap and takes the closest thing he can to a nap. He wants to _play_. Betty won’t want for anything. She doesn’t need this stuff, but he also doesn’t want to tell her to drop out just so she can go on an adventure with him. Sighing, he slithers around her legs, getting squashed when she tightens her knees together. “Easssy on the goods!”

“What are you doing?” she mutters under her breath.

Annoyed, he slithers onto the floor and away. “I don’t need thissssss.”

She sits up in her desk, apprehensive, but borderline amused. She can’t talk to him, of course. Can’t chase him without looking _totally _insane. He sticks his tongue out at her and purposely opens the door so everyone looks at the unusual occurrence. They can’t see him, of course, and gasp, looking around, confused, as the teacher tries to recover their place. Betty gives Jughead an unimpressed look.

Well, fine. He can haunt as well as the next person. Better, even.

After raiding all the vending machines, Jughead feels sugary and pleased enough to sit through one more class. He saunters behind Betty in the halls, quickly sliding into the desk next to hers in the back row.

She looks around like she’s not sure if it’s just her that can see him in his human form right now. “What are you doing? Someone’s going to sit there.”

“Yeah. Me.” He flashes her a sugar-coated, slightly bloody grin. When a boy with thick glasses approaches, about to sit in his lap, Jughead places his boot on the kid’s butt and shoves him away.

“Whoa!” The kid falls over the desk in front. He pushes up his glasses and rights himself. “What was that?” He looks around, nostrils flaring. “Did someone push me? Did _you_?” he accuses Betty.

“Did I get my leg _over _the desk and kick you down the aisle? No.”

Sarcastic girl. Jughead lays his hand out for a low-five. Betty ignores him.

“Fine.” Glasses-boy straightens his uniform and attempts again, only this time, Jughead coats the bottom of his shoes with thumbtacks.

“Don’t!” Betty grabs onto Jughead’s shirt and tugs hard enough to turn him on.

“_Now_ I’ve got your attention,” he muses, twisting his wrist and possessing the boy to walk to the other end of the room and plop down in a desk over there instead. The boy looks shocked at the impact, glancing around the room, disoriented, before quickly gathering his materials.

“You are such a brat. I’m in _class_.”

“So? That means we can’t have any fun?”

“It’s _class_,” she repeats incredulously.

“Well _clearly _I don’t have any,” he teases. “Loosen up. Otherwise, the next four hours are gonna be a whole new form of purgatory.” She rolls her eyes and faces the front of the room. “You’re the brat.” She doesn’t budge. “Give me a kiss.”

“Now? It’d look insane. Well, _more_ insane,” she corrects as a few students glance at her for talking to herself.

“Since when are you worried about looking weird?” When she shakes her head, not responding, he leans forward, hand on her knee. The subtle way her thighs open gives him an idea. “Don’t worry, babes. If you’re nervous about them seeing, I have ideas about how to satisfy those needs.”

“What does _that _mean?” When someone turns, confused at her outburst, Betty sinks back into her chair. She flips open a notebook and starts furiously writing a note to him.

_Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean I won’t hunt you down and kill you again for messing with someone else._

He blows a raspberry. “You think I’d cheat?” She glares in a way that makes him wonder about Red and Hal. “First of all, I think Mary would have me exorcised, and second of all, I meant that I need to eat. Living things tend to keep up my energy.”

She quirks an eyebrow.

_You’re giving me Renfield vibes._

He laughs at the _Dracula _reference. “Accurate. I do eat bugs. But I have something tastier in mind. A win-win situation. Something _fun_.”

The green in her eyes darkens like a prism as her gears start turning, trying to predict his next move - as if anyone really could. Without warning, he leans in to suck a kiss on her neck. She gasps, straightening and fighting the instinct to push him off. Licking and suckling a happy pink mark on her skin, Jughead tweaks her breast. Her nails dig into her palm to keep herself from crying out or touching him - and that’s not _fun_, so he pulls away. He needs her to be so relaxed that she actually enjoys their escapades.

As Betty opens her mouth, confused, Jughead slips under her desk, contorting until he’s comfortable.

“Juggie,” she whispers worriedly.

“Just focus on the lecture, babes.”

He doesn’t do anything right away, lets her simmer and shift.

He plucks her deliciously damp underwear towards him, the smell of her arousal better than fresh baked cookies, in his opinion. He moans, pulling a little more insistently. Betty lifts her hips as much as she can, but it’s awkward to take off her underwear under the desk.

“Fuck it,” he mutters, letting the material snap back against her, relishing her startled gasp.

He presses his thumb into the thin cotton covering, feeling his way along her increasingly familiar grooves. Mapping her pleasure makes him focus. Everything else is quiet outside of her breathing, the way her shoes drag against the carpet as she braces herself for his ministrations. He carefully indents his fingers against her slit, like he’s pushing his thumb into dough for those chocolate-kiss peanut butter cookies he used to make at home when it was particularly bad and he needed a pick-me-up for him and Jelly.

Betty is _certainly _a better substitute than a chocolatey treat - and much more addictive.

He massages gently until she’s squirming down in her seat to get closer for more pressure.

“Bet you don’t mind looking weird _now_.” Her knees jerk in on either side of his head like she wants to squash him between her thighs, making him laugh. “Easy, babes. You just keep listening to that lecture like the good girl you are. I’ll keep being the bad thing you need.”

Before she can hiss a retort, Jughead stretches her underwear to the side and dips his fingers in where her sweet honey lays. Scissoring inside of her results in some _very _strangled groans on Betty’s end.

“That’s it. Open up for me, baby.”

Her even breathing encourages him.

“See, I’m lucky, because I can be as loud as I fucking _want _and no one will hear me - no one but you will know how much I like sucking on my sexy wife’s clit and making her come all over my face.”

A barely-there groan.

He grins, pumping her harder, reaching up to fondle one of her breasts before kissing the inside of her knee. The feather-light kisses get progressively more intimate and have Betty spreading her legs for him.

Despite what anyone may think, edging his wife in the middle of class may be the most _evil _thing he’s ever done. He teases her, licking just a little, working her up until she’s shaking, then backing off until she’s somewhat sane.

He wants to hear his name.

“_Jughead,_” she finally mumbles under her breath.

“That’s my girl.”

Shoving his fingers up as far as they can go, Jughead taps her spongy flesh to the rhythm of that stupid song they were singing this morning. Not that she can tell. Betty’s head falls back, eyes fluttering closed.

“You don’t come until I say, babes.”

She rocks her hips as subtly as she can on his hand.

“You’ll know you can come when I use my teeth, okay?”

She’s so far gone he wonders if she can process any of what he’s saying.

He works her panties off and stuffs them in his back pocket. No one’s noticed her yet, although that may be because of the energy rippling off of him. He appraises her glistening, swollen lips and _feeds_.

“Ah!” She convulses at the hot rush of sensation, the way his tongue twirls against her clit, licking up every delicious drop of her being he can reach. Hoisting her thighs up on either shoulder, Jughead laps at her until her thick come is mixed with salty sweat. She squirms back, nearly panting. He wants to growl, _stay, _and sink his fangs in.

She needs to come. His lovely wife is in class and needs to come all over his willing face. He kisses her clit and honks her breast, the sensations confusing her. He takes a moment to grin against her thigh, knowing she can feel the light bite of his teeth. He nips at her, just once, to hear her gasp, to have her hand shoot under the desk and root itself in his hair.

“Hold on,” he warns, pulling her forward and latching onto her clit for a kiss to the end the world on. She shakes worse than the earth. Grinds into him, mouth open in a silent cry, but it doesn’t end there. Oh no, when his girl comes, he keeps going, licking and lapping and sneaking a finger in to keep her writhing and clenching for him.

The moment she breaks, he sets off a screaming fire alarm to drown out his name. He doesn’t want to share _everything _with the class. Confused, the students stir and gather their things to leave. Betty keeps rocking, legs turning to jello on either side of him. She’s coating him like a filthy, wonderful fountain of life.

He keeps sucking her off until he has to possess the rest of the class not to look at her as they evacuate. The power she’s giving him makes it easy, like swatting a fly.

When her long-as-fuck orgasm subsides, Betty shoves his face away. “Are you fucking _serious_?”

“No, I’m fucking _you_, and you seemed to enjoy it,” he muses, licking his lips and sitting back to admire the throbbing sex before him.

She grabs her bag and carefully extracts herself from the desk so as not to hit him. That’s a good sign, he thinks. She stumbles, barely able to walk, which he takes as a high compliment.

“Let me help you.” He chuckles, hurriedly wrapping an arm around her waist.

“Oh, you’ve _helped _enough. I can’t believe I was so stupid as to come in the middle of class.”

“If it helps, I think we finally proved that you _can _have fun in school.”

She whirls to a stop, staring at him incredulously. “You’re gonna get me kicked out for indecency.”

He shrugs, her tang still on his lips and keeping him in a great mood. “Do you _want _me to bring your class back?”

“_No_.”

“What do you want?”

Huffing, she looks both ways down the hall. “Shut off the stupid fire alarm and take me to a supply closet.”

“What? Why?”

“Because there’s no way I’m going back to class without getting cleaned up, and I figure since you _like _my taste so much–”

She doesn’t get to finish the sentence before he’s snapped them into a closet and has her hoisted up on a shelf. Everything rattles and rolls. They grind and fuck and nip and kiss so hard that the thunder cracks when he comes. He loves the way she holds onto his hair, the way she squeezes him just enough to hurt so _good_. Moaning, he nuzzles into her neck, pressing kisses along her rapidly beating pulse before pulling back to admire her gorgeous face.

“You’re a terrible influence,” he growls, _radiating _with energy - with _life_.

Heavy-lidded, she tilts her chin. “Clean me up, Juggie.”

“Ohhhh, my pleasure, babes.”

As he hoists her up, nose trailing down her chest, he thinks he could take over the world like this.

By the time they get back to class, she’s exhausted and heavy with sex. Chewing on a gummy bear he stole from the vending machine, Jughead watches her struggle to stay awake.

“Want _me_ to take notes, babe? It’s not like I can sleep.”

She shakes her head, blonde locks swaying gently. Despite having lost most of its curl to the vigors of sex, her hair still looks soft and pillowy. He wants to rub his face on it, pretend to have a blonde mustache, and chew on it like hay. Jerking awake, Betty attempts to refocus on the board, silently declining the offer for gummy bears.

“Looks like someone needs to keep their energy up.”

_Only to keep up with yours_, she writes in the margins of her notes, propping her chin up with her arm so as not to nod off.

She’s _really_ trying.

It’s kind of endearing in a way that makes him feel melty and soft and maybe a little guilty for distracting her all class period.

He summons a chair ideally suited to connect with hers. She blinks, confused as he puts his arm along her shoulders.

“I’ll tell you what you miss. I promise. I feel guilty for interrupting your dedicated studies.” Betty appraises him shrewdly, the teacher’s ramblings just background noise. He points to her hand and enchants it to keep writing notes. “Dictation. See? I don’t even need to use my hands and you look like you’re just listening with your eyes closed.”

Although she’s clearly nervous, Betty does look _tempted_. After one last glance to the front of the room, Betty nods, leaning her head back against the arm he’s put out for neck support. Since her chair is near the back of the room, he doubts anyone will notice that she’s out for the count, especially if he keeps moving her wrist. He watches her slowly melt into relaxation and half-listens to the lecture just in case she has questions later. He edges the elastic out to massage her scalp, to twirl the ends of her pretty blonde strands until she shifts and rolls into him for support.

“That’s nice,” she murmurs quietly. He smiles, his lips coated in enough of her come that it acts like sweet vaseline against the iron taste of blood. A contented nuzzle makes his veins hum. She grips the leg of his pants, eyes closed, not even caring or realizing how strange this would look to anyone else. “Don’t leave, okay?”

“Okay, babe.”

_This is nice, _he realizes, the thought burrowing a hole in his chest cavity. He tosses his treats at random people’s heads just to feel normal again. Haunting people, even in a small way, is strangely satisfying.

At the end of class, the teacher claps to announce the homework and Betty jerks awake, eyes bright and disoriented. He gently gestures to her notes and kisses her nose, loving the adorable way she blinks at the gesture.

“Homework.”

She nods, regaining control of her wrist and hurrying to follow along.

Someone shuffles the back of their collar, a gummy bear falling to the floor.

Betty’s lip quirks up. Even though it probably looks weird, she takes his hand as she leaves the class.

He pretends to lag behind just so she has to tug him. “How many more of these do we have today?”

“Probably more than you can handle,” she teases, knocking into his side. He shifts into a visible disguise so people don’t think she’s insane for talking to thin air, nor alone. It’s kind of fun to be seen_ together_ by more than the judgmental Andrews. He looks sort of like a living version of himself in the tacky prep school uniform, tie loose around his neck. Betty, for her part, looks appreciative to be _seen _with _him, _too. Maybe school isn’t so bad this time around. “You want to go here now?”

“_No_. But if you’re going to be a _weirdo_…they tend to look better in pairs.”

Her laugh ricochets across the lockers. At lunch, they sit together at a table outside in the shade. A few students say “hello” and eye them like they’re something new on the cafeteria menu. He reels in the urge to growl and scare them off.

A tall kid with preppy hair stops and gapes.

Jughead’s tongue rattles against his teeth. “You _lossst_, friend?”

He blinks as if realizing he is not, in fact, invisible. “I’m sorry, I just–is that an _engagement_ ring?” he balks, motioning to Betty’s hand.

As she looks down, taking a breath to come up with a lie, Jughead pulls her closer. “She’s _sss_poken for.”

“Do you have a lisp?”

Betty presses her fist to her mouth and shoots Jughead a bemused look.

Scales officially ruffled, he fixes Preppy with a grim smile. “Only when I’m hungry.” He mouths at Betty’s neck, grazing his teeth and glaring at the asshole staring at them.

Seeming to realize he’s overstepped his bounds, the kid straightens. “Sorry. I’m Kevin. I have no filter and a penchant for gossip. That jewelry is _gorgeous _and must’ve made my mouth run off without me.” Slightly mollified by the admiration of his craftsmanship and relationship, Jughead pulls off of Betty’s neck to rub her back. “I’ve just never seen anyone here or our age even be that..._committed _to something. You’re wearing a ring, too!”

“It’s a promise ring, but they’ll be official when we graduate,” Betty intercedes. “Jughead designed them himself.”

“_Really_?” Kevin slides into their table without waiting for an invitation, completely oblivious to Jughead’s scowl.

After a few minutes of interrogation covering as conversation, Jughead’s had enough. “Aren’t your _friends _missing you, Kev?”

“Oh! Right. They’ll be excited I got some of the scoop. See you in class, Betty! See you in class...Jughead?”

Grinning, blood tinting his gums, Jughead reflects on how smart his wife is for saying sometimes he skips class to work on his boxing scholarship, hence the bruises and cuts. “If you’re lucky.”

With an uneasy nod, Kevin retreats to the other preppy tables. The uniforms make everyone look so boring, but he guesses since the town had some “gang problems” it’s easier to make everyone dress the same - like clothes can make sense of the chaotic world of hormones and hells. The Ghoulies still would’ve come for his blood, same as the bullies, if he wasn’t strapped with power and a pretty girl like he is now.

“Do you actually _like _any of these people?”

“Not yet, but there’s hope for a few. _Kevin _was certainly animated. He didn’t seem too freaked to hold a normal conversation, which I think is a pretty impressive quality.” She smiles, brushing a lock of hair from his forehead and making his chest go all fluttery.

He pushes his feet up on the bars of the table. “That gossip hound? I could have him piss himself in a minute.”

“Let’s not talk about piss while we’re eating. Besides, it’s not often my table is graced with such _lively _company,” she teases, pinching his cheek fondly.

He narrows his eyebrows in concern, blowing past the _lively _comment. “Did you sit by yourself your first day?”

“No.” She stabs at the iceberg lettuce scattered in a tiny bowl, eyes trained on the table. “I mean, kind of. I sat at the edge of the poets’ table until I realized I wasn’t nearly pretentious enough about my weirdness to hang with them and sat in the library for the rest of the period.”

He imagines her sitting with her head tilted forward, bright eyes focused, trying to process why she can’t connect with their vision of the world. Being lonely. Trying to understand. Maybe even using ill-timed humor to cover up other, darker things. He holds her hand without even thinking about it.

“That’s a good place for loner weirdos to hang out.”

She laughs wryly, poking at the fruit cup he summons for her. “I guess it is.” They squeeze each other’s hands, Betty looking up at him with something that makes his insides go molten like melted chocolate. “I like it here, too.”

~~~

The rest of the school day is sort of a roller coaster. In some classes he pretends to be alive, posing as a tough kid with a bloody lip who happened to connect with the cool new girl, who’s obviously the most gorgeous and interesting one in school. He’s actually pretty compelling to the high school mind, now that he thinks about it. People stare and gossip and Kevin hurriedly tries to align himself with them when they’re all in the same class. At the very least, he’s sarcastic and judgmental, so Jughead can tolerate him if Betty needs a _living _friend.

Some kids try to eavesdrop on their conversations, so Jughead makes mental notes to sabotage those ones during class with excessive flatulence and creepy breezes. In other classes, he gets bored and goes invisible, stalking along the walls, playing with lab equipment, reading, braiding Betty’s hair and getting flicked away by her pen.

“High school is like a whole other kind of purgatory,” he tells her when they’re finally in a free period.

“Yeah, well, you’d know. What’s it really like being back in school?”

“Insane. At least this time I have certain _perks_,” he emphasizes, fluffing her hair. She giggles, earning them a harsh glare from the librarian. “_Quiet_.” Betty affectionately shakes her head at him and he can’t believe how fucking lucky he is, how _stupidly _lucky he is, really, that everything happened to bring him to _this_. He pushes a curl of her hair behind her ear. Death’s not a blessing. There is no higher purpose. But there are silver linings - blonde ones, actually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, if only we all had such lively distractions in school. How do you feel about the morning singalongs and snake jewelry themes we have going on here? You know how I love thoughts. Just turn on that juice and see what shakes loose. HA. See you soonish for the next chapter, my friends!


	5. Ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thrift stores and Neitherworld visits this round, people, and thanks to beta @jandjsalmon for being patient with me while I floundered about Neitherworld semantics. The ghosts are happy. It's been a rough week and I wanted something that would hopefully lift people's spirits. Hope you enjoy and maybe leave me some thoughts and feelings in the comment section if you're up to it.

Penelope holds up a strange two-headed sculpture with hollow eyes and droopy jaws. “Is _this_ what they look like?”

“Un_canny_,” Jughead muses, faux-impressed with a hand to his cheek.

Betty just sort of squints incredulously at her stepmother. “No. I told you, they don’t look _gross_. They look human. They just can’t touch stuff.”

“Not like me,” Jughead adds, goosing Betty and earning an affronted look that shifts into amusement. Riling her up comes naturally, even if he does sort of prefer the softer, more tender moments they’re alone. Being in this madhouse with a Neitherworld appointment on the horizon is enough to make him antsy about getting as many moments with her as he can.

Not that he thinks they’ll take her or exorcise him. They can’t. _He won’t let them_. It’s not like living-dead relationships are even a common thing where there’d be a ton of laws preventing them from being together, but the powers that be can probably make things _difficult_ and he wants to take advantage of how _easy _things are right now for them.

Penelope shifts the clay, disappointed. “I guess I could call it impressionistic. It’s rather reminiscent of their crumbly nature during the seance, in my opinion.”

“I’d like to leave my _impression _on her,” Mary grumbles from upstairs.

Jughead cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of the other red-haired woman of the house. “Still hoping to exterminate the living, Mare? I could get you an in-house discount.”

“We are no longer affiliated with exterminations - that contract was cancelled!”

He scoffs, cuddling Betty closer on the couch. "I think I got the better deal right here." In the house, no one tries to sit with Betty besides him and the Andrews, so he never needs to give someone the ol’ boot to the butt. Hal only wants to pull her aside to get a one-sentence update on her day before asking about the supernatural beings and if they enjoyed his slideshow of his trip to Canada. Maybe Fred gives a shit about Hal, but Jughead can almost guarantee that Mary doesn’t.

Mary’s been busy brushing up on the handbook of the deceased as well as marriage and divorce laws, which he thinks is stupid because things that apply here almost certainly have nothing to do with Neitherworld laws. He’s married to Betty. She’s _happy_.

“_How’s the cleaning going?_” he shouts up the stairs.

Forcing a smile, Betty puts her hand on his thigh.

He already messes with Fred’s tiny town and endlessly sheds dust in the attic to get back at them for making the damn appointment in the first place. He’d do more if he thought he could get away with it without pissing Betty off.

The Andrews tend to take homework duty and are all too eager to hear about her day after being cooped up in the house all day. Betty leaves out the more salacious aspects of Study Hall and saves those for the diary she keeps under her mattress, which she so graciously and begrudgingly throws at him in exchange for some peace when she’s sleeping. It’s a compelling read - getting inside that brilliant, wonderful mind of hers. A lot of the older entries are sad or dry but all of it is poignant. The newer stuff's pretty fun and helps his ego a ton.

Betty glances nervously at her stepmother, then at him, biting her lip.

“What’s up, Betts? You want me to go visible for crazy art_ist_? Inspire her next masterpiece?”

“No. You’re _already_ a piece of work.” She picks at her skirt. It’s pastel pink. He’d thought most of her wardrobe would be black, but apparently, before the divorce, she used to wear lots of pastels. Then, when she was unhappy, she started wearing black as a signal to her father - to everyone.

_“Black like the color of my soul,” she had mused, rolling in towards Jughead in her attempt to find a comfortable way to sleep. “He didn’t notice, though. No one did. Penelope said it suited me: black on white.” She smiled, tracing his chest. “Come to think of it, that seems to be your favorite pairing.”_

_“Me and you?”_

_“Black and white,” she clarified quietly._

_“Just FYI, I like you in everything. Or nothing. But I like you covered in _ ** _me_ ** _ best of all,” he insisted, rolling on top of her and smothering her in kisses. The crescent of her smile felt like it was a knife carving him from the inside without the horridness of pain. Although he dotted her skin in flecks of blood, she held him like he was a light in the dark. It terrified and thrilled him. It felt like they were possessing one another._

She slides her hand to the inside of his thigh and his nerve endings crawl like a million excitable cockroaches under his skin. “I was actually thinking of going around town to see if we could get a few of Fred and Mary’s things. You know - old pictures, sentimental stuff. Make the attic feel more like home until we figure out how to get them out of it.”

“Not. Your. Responsibility,” he chides, poking her nose. The curses aren’t even made to be broken. They’re really more of a tease from the powers that be - a ridiculous _fuck you _in the afterlife.

“I know, but I feel like I should _do _something. They’re cooped up with my crazy family all day. The least I can do is try to bring them something that makes them happy.” His frown incites her to plead, enlarging those sweet green eyes that might as well be Fizzle Rocks to him. “I thought maybe we could make a date of it. You’ve been hanging a lot at school lately–”

“Yeah, it’s not like we haven’t been spending time together–”

“We have been spending a lot of time together,” she agrees, twirling her ponytail and batting her eyelashes. “This is just something a little different.”

“Different,” he repeats, frowning. Things _have _been different, for him, at least.

“I know going to school with me probably isn’t the most _exciting _way to spend your day.” He scoffs and holds her closer. What’re a few years popping in and out of classes to cuddle his wife when he has a century or two to kill? She prods his lips with such tenderness that he has to kiss them. Everything’s so _soft_. He chases her fingers with his teeth, loving the way her eyes light up at his showy snaps.

With a small giggle, she leans her cheek on his shoulder. “Maybe this will give us a chance to do something..._normal_...ish? Investigate the dead? Find the best thrift shops?” When he quirks an eyebrow, waiting for the _actual, logical _reason he would want to go, Betty wraps her leg around his. “Plus, we can go to Pop’s afterward.”

“You got me.”

He pulls her in for a kiss, savoring the sweetness of the nectarine they shared as an after-school snack. Eternity doesn’t seem so long wrapped up in her embrace.

“Ugh, you’re making me a sap,” he protests, rolling dramatically onto the floor. He should really eat more so she doesn’t tempt him so easily. Especially in that skirt. He licks his lips and angles so she has to step over him to get to the door, giving him a teasing glimpse between her legs. Sometimes he just wants her to sit on him. His face. His lap. Anything.

The creak of a door makes him sit up in alarm, glaring at the attic to try and sense the stale, chilly fumes of the Neitherworld. There's nothing but a brief breeze of fresh air. Betty quirks an eyebrow. “Ready, babe?”

_Babe._

The word thumps in his chest like his heart is still beating.

“_Fuck_ yeah I am.”

Scratching the floor like a dog in his haste, Jughead bounds to her side. Her smile feels like a treat. “Your bike or mine?”

~~~

The thrift store is in front of the old junkyard, which is kind of perfect in its own Riverdale way. Taking deep breaths, Betty exhales through the perfect _o _of her lips.

“You nervous?”

“Kinda,” she admits, staring at the slightly dirty siding like it’s a terrifying roller coaster she has to psyche herself up to get on.

He’s not sure what there is to freak out over. The gangs don’t seem as prominent in town as they were when he was a kid. It’s not like they’re going to find a severed head on the shelves or naked photos of the Andrews’, should they happen upon any of their old albums.

“Maybe you need a milkshake to psyche you up?” He spins her hair.

“They close in an hour.” She frowns, tightening her ponytail. “Okay. Let’s do this.” She marches forward with such motivation that it actually takes him a second to catch up, laughing.

“And you say _I’m _the weirdo.”

Betty’s ponytail waves at him as she looks both ways before deciding which aisle to go down. He drifts behind her, messing with the racks of clothes to unnerve the other customers.

She swallows, distracted. “Do you see anybody we could ask for help?”

“You’re literally talking to a ghost who’s been right next to you the whole time. I don’t see anybody, but photo albums are probably in the back, by _wall decorations_. I haven’t been here in a few decades but I doubt it’s changed _that _much - little does, in our small town of Riverdale.”

She offers him a halfhearted smile and slings a sweaty palm into his. “Let me know if you see anything you like.”

“Mmkay,” he tugs her into his arms. “You mean _besides _you, right?”

“You’re just trying to get me to blow you, aren’t you?”

He chuckles, glancing down the aisle at the odd looks on a few womens’ faces. “We need to get you an earpiece so you don’t look like you’re constantly talking to yourself, sexy ghost detective.” He nuzzles into her ear, tickling her side until a high-pitched squeal startles both of them. “Who brings a _baby_ to the thrift store?”

Actually, he wouldn’t put it past his own mother to bring him and Jellybean to places with lots of tiny things they could put in their mouths.

Another wail blasts through the room.

“Juggie.” Betty looks pained.

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Take _care _of it?” Her grip tightens in alarm before he snaps to the front where a toddler sits in a tiny playpen by the open door of the back office. The whole image reeks of small-town charm. This is clearly an employee’s kid and their version of daycare, public access television playing on a tiny screen in the distance.

Muffled thudding on the old floors indicates that Betty’s running through the store in her cute ankle boots to find him. _Sweet._

The baby stares up at him in silent awe, drool sliding down his chin. “What are you yapping about, huh? You think you’ve got problems?” The kid whines, gesturing with a tiny fist to the corner where a circular saliva-soaked bird has clearly been tossed across the room.

“If you _loved_ it so much, maybe you shouldn’t have _thrown it away_,” he sasses, fully aware that he’s talking to a toddler. He stoops down to swipe the stuffed bird from the corner and does a jump-shot towards the playpen just as Betty comes into view. “Swish!” The kid rolls over and grabs the bird, shaking it and shoving it back into his mouth. Jughead gestures. “See? I’m not the only one who gets cranky when I’m hungry.”

As if annoyed by the insinuation, the toddler tosses his bird out of the pen again.

“Ungrateful brat, trying to get us to play fetch.”

Betty giggles. Even the baby seems to brighten at the sweet sound.

A woman’s voice hits the walls like a slingshot thud, reverberating as a side door closes. “Can I help you?”

Betty freezes, wide-eyed like a deer caught in the headlights as she regards whoever is off to the side. “Hi. I heard crying, so I came to check if everything was all right.”

“Decent instincts, I guess. Any interest in babysitting?”

Betty chuckles anxiously, glancing at Jughead. “Looks like someone just lost their toy, so...I can be on my way. Unless you need help, of course.”

“I can always use help. I was serious about that babysitting gig. What brings you here today?” The woman turns in to the office and Jughead’s gut does a strange swoop like when he tried that sideways swing ride that dropped him around at the carnival. The woman’s familiar like a weird..._impression._ She reminds him of someone. The lady brushes the lint off of the stuffed bird and underhands it to what’s presumably her child.

“We actually moved into the old Andrews’ house and my dad is really interested in restoring the house to what it once was. If you have anything that belonged to them - pictures, even–”

“We have some of their stuff around. You can have the pictures. I have a whole stash I haven’t thrown out yet.” She waves Betty into the room, heading towards a file cabinet.

Betty creeps into the office with all the carefulness of Indiana Jones nervous about setting off a trap. “Thank you.”

He eyes the way she’s clasped her hands in front of her skirt, posture perfect and alert. “You trying to make a good impression or what?”

Betty shifts, not meeting his eye and chewing her lip so badly he’s afraid it’ll bleed.

“Stop that,” he chides, tapping her buttcheek. “You’re getting the Andrews’ precious photos. It’s nothing to worry about. You don’t have to babysit the brats if you don’t want to.”

As she sucks in a breath, the woman gestures vaguely to the walls. “These are my other little monsters if you’re interested in the babysitting gig. I pay a decent per-hour because there’s three of them and one of me – or you, as it were.”

“Three?” Betty repeats apprehensively.

The woman rambles on about her kids, 10, 7, and _this little surprise_...but Jughead’s looking at the pictures. The middle kid is wearing a _very _fucking familiar crown beanie over black curls.

“What the…?” He leaves Betty’s side to move closer, scanning the wall, vaguely aware of the way she hovers behind him. It’s possible that his stuff ended up at the thrift store, of course, but there’s something about the kids that feels weird. Then, he sees _the _photo. The one that was on the fridge at home. Two kids hugging outside the Twilight. “Hey, that’s me!”

“What?”

“That’s me,” he repeats, pointing to the grinning, short kid in a crown beanie hugging his little sister. “And JB.” He turns to the woman rummaging through a pile of photos, her hair darker than the last summer he saw her. She’s taller. Older. “Jellybean.”

Barely aware of Betty’s fingers on his sleeve, Jughead goes off like a sparkling firecracker in the room, talking fast and fizzling and _moving_. Photos go up in the air and the kid in the playpen is squealing and he’s so _fucking _excited he can’t stand it.

“Three kids?! Who’s the father? Why is she _here_? It’s amazing _she’s_ here. Didn’t she say she manages this place? My sister, a manager. Can you believe it? We could barely let her walk Hot Dog she was small but I guess she was strong and...”

Betty trembles, barely managing a smile as she helps pick up the scattered photographs. He zooms right up to her. “You knew, didn’t you?” She hesitates, but her eyes tell him all he needs to know. “You fucking brilliant detective, you found my baby sister and her three babies, too. We are _totally _babysitting.”

“What?”

“You okay?” Jellybean asks, her braids swooping over her shoulders.

He stands up straight, beaming, totally tempted to freak the _shit _out of her right now.

“I, um, that photo,” Betty hurries, “It says _Jug and Jelly_.”

“Yeah.” Jellybean’s mouth twists. “That’s me and my brother. I was Jellybean. He was Jughead. Trust me, our real names were the worst. I go by JB now and he got cremated so thank god he doesn’t have that awful thing carved on top of him for all eternity.”

“You guys have a family smile. It’s nice.”

For the first time since kindergarten when she wasn’t sure she’d make friends, Jellybean looks _shy_. “Thanks. My kids have slightly better names than our parents gave _us_. The oldest is Penn–”

“Oh, _really_, Bean?”

Betty quirks a brow but doesn’t interrupt.

He explains himself, anyway. “A variation on the middle name. Cop-out. Bullshit.”

“The middle is Floyd.”

“_Gross_.” Probably because she liked the band.

“And this little monster is Griff.”

“As in _gryphon_?!”

“Did you used to play that game – Gryphons and Gargoyles?” Betty asks, surprising him.

“Yes,” he and his sister answer. He laughs, watching her eyes go big and sparkly in remembrance of past campaigns. How did she play when he wasn’t around to help guide her campaigns? A rogue? A paladin?

“I can’t wait to hear about it.” Betty smiles, clutching the Andrews’ album to her chest. He doesn’t miss the way she sneaks photos of the pictures on the walls, even a close-up of when he was a kid with JB.

The lines between his past life and his new one are all kinda wobbly but he’s excited she gets to see both sides of it.

More shenanigans ensue before they’re able to leave with their loot and a weird sense of deja vu.

“Are you okay?” Betty asks when they’re by the gazebo holding their Pop’s milkshakes. “I know today was a lot. I didn’t know how you would handle it.”

“I’m great.” She chews her lip and stares at him like she’s waiting for him to erupt. He sucks on his straw and puts an arm out behind her back. “I know it’s strange, and maybe I should be sad or something, but it was nice to see JB. I don’t need some big reunion or to show up to her or anything, I’m just happy she’s living a good life. She’s not in some gang or super depressed – well, any more than I think a woman with three little monsters and a mortgage would normally be. I barely even recognized her. What’s it been? Twenty-some years?”

“And _now _you get to babysit,” she needles, nudging him with her elbow before taking a sip of her milkshake.

“I believe she hired you, Elisabeth Shue.”

“Adventures in Babysitting?” Of course his wife would catch the film reference. She’s so cool. “You’re the one who volunteered me. I know nothing about children. Will you help me, Juggie?”

“Of course I will, babes.” He wraps an arm around her neck, kissing the top of her head.   
“We’ll make some funny faces, feed them a lot. They’re Joneses; the kids will know how to eat. It’ll be fine.”

“If you say so,” she muses, scooting closer to lay her head more comfortably on his shoulder. “You’re not mad, right?”

“No,” he decides, staring off at the water for maybe a little too long. It’s strange because he’s not mad at _anyone_ right now. The ever-boiling rage under his skin seems...faded. The serenity is fucking weird, especially since they’re in the park…(where he died), his brain normally would supply, but the note is absent. He clears his throat, fingers creeping around Betty’s shoulder. “I can _punish _you, of course, if you feel like you’ve been naughty.”

She laughs, flicking the moisture from her straw at him. The splatters go through him.

“Selective opacity.” He winks.

When she leans in for a kiss, he’s as solid as he can be.

That night, he keeps flipping through the images on her phone - not just the ones of the Joneses. Everything. As far back as he can.

It feels silly, but looking at the past kind of gets him excited about what could be the future.

~~~

He jerks at the sound of people coming down the hall. It can’t be the Coopers. Penelope and Hal finished their rather vigorous S&M session two hours ago and should be asleep. Jughead had nearly brought the walls down by jumping on the bed, blasting Radiohead, and singing loudly so Betty couldn’t hear them. Her disgust had transformed into laughter as she harmonized, “I’m a _creeeeep_!” and jumped with him, blankets and pillows practically levitating in their strange dance.

One arm curled protectively around his sleeping wife, Jughead gets Freddy Kreuger slice-em-dice-em hands ready. He doesn’t want to be a snake and worry about slithering across Betty.

To his surprise, the two people pause outside the door. The Andrews’. “What do you want?” he asks, covering Betty’s ears.

“It’s time,” Mary says, sounding surprisingly resigned.

“Time for _what_?”

“You _know _what.”

_The trial?_

It’s not a trial _yet_, he supposes, although Weatherbee will almost certainly try to make it one.

A tarantula of unease creeps along the inside of his ribcage and he tries to crush it by holding his wife protectively against him.

“Just leave us alone.”

“We have to talk about what’s best for Betty.”

“_We _don’t have to do anything. Betty’s pretty vocal about what she wants.” He cuts himself off before he gets _dirty_ about it. “As tight as you may be, we don’t have to be some big, happy family.”

Fred shifts, leaning on the door frame. “Don’t you think it’d be easier, Jug? We really love Betty.”

“But you don’t love me.” The sarcasm sizzles on his tongue, fading into pained need. He nuzzles down into Betty. _She _loves him, he thinks, if there is such a thing.

Clearly searching for the kindest way to phrase it, Fred’s gaze travels around the room before settling on Jughead again. “We appreciate the small gestures you and Betty have been working with lately.” They know as well as he does that any olive branches on his behalf are all from Betty. “We’re also grateful that you’ve...kept an eye on things.”

“What _things_? Betty?”

“Betty. The Coopers.” Mary glances at Fred, arms folded, before going on. “After everything that happened, we are _glad _that the Lodges and Coopers seem to be put off of seances. What with Hal being excited about things and Penelope..._inspired_, we feel like the chances of an exorcism are slim to none.”

Fred clears his throat, wrapping an arm around Mary and edging them both into the room. “Although things aren’t _ideal_, they are better than they were before. Still...we need to talk about Betty.”

“What about her?” Jughead snaps, still not sure how apprehensive he should be. They’re being weirdly optimistic and he’s not sure if he likes it.

Mary gestures to the bed like it’s obvious. “She’s _sixteen_ and falling for you!”

He glances at the slumbering sweetheart in his arms. “So?”

“You’re _dead_.”

“She kinda knew that going in.”

“Look, Jughead, this relationship may make her happy and she certainly seems to like being our friend, but what happens if and when she wants to join us on the other side again?”

“She’s not lonely like that.” It feels weird to be talking about her like this when she’s right in the room with them. It’s not fair to her. “Besides, _she _should be a part of that conversation.”

Exasperated, Mary moves closer to the bed and seems to fight the instinct to raise the covers over Betty’s shoulders even though he’s _right there _to take care of her. “There’s hardly a moment you two aren’t attached at the hip. Have you two talked about that original request? Maybe she doesn’t want to join us out of loneliness, but out of some misplaced romanticism.”

“I thought you were a lawyer, not a therapist. She’s fine. _We’re _fine. Let her rest in peace - alive and well and right _here_,” he amends dramatically.

“Jughead - I know sixteen-year-old girls. She’s not going to want to age and get older than you, or she might grow up and want to be with a partner who can give her…” _Something better? _His bitter mind fills in, every hair sharp an on-edge like a porcupine ready to stab the gap Mary’s left. “Children. She may not be strange forever.”

He grips Betty hard enough to indent her skin. “Betty doesn’t want that.”

“Maybe not at sixteen, but people change.”

A static flash of his drunken father giving a speech flickers in the back of his brain. He gives Mary a grim, scabbed smile. “Not in my experience.”

“_Yes_, in _your_ experience, Jughead. People _change_.” Mary raises her eyebrows at the way he cradles Betty against him.

He prickles at every implication. She doesn’t _know _him. She doesn’t know _Betty_, either. They’re not her kids. They’re not her _problem_. Once Betty graduates, he’ll get her out of this fucking house and into whatever world she wants to be in - that _they _want to be in.

And if she picks the Neitherworld…

He doesn’t know what to think about that.

Revenge still sits neatly tucked in the back of his mind, waiting for Malachai’s file. But he probably has something like a _century _to worry about that.

Mary’s approach is gentle but firm and he hates that he’s rarely ever _experienced _that. “You know as well as I do that there are a lot of unknown variables here: her future curse, her attempts to break ours. What happens when your afterlife is up but hers goes on? She needs _resources_, Jughead, and if you’re not willing to get them, then _we will_. It’s as simple as that.”

His lips feel dry and he’s not sure if his cut’s snuck open again. Panic buzzes around his ears like an invisible fly.

“I’ll check on Weatherbee – for the _resources_. But if you try to pull anything…”

“You’ll exorcise us, we know – even though it might disappoint your sleeping beauty.”

They all glance at Betty’s sleeping form, her brow furrowed in annoyance as she struggles to stay asleep.

He kisses her brow, caresses her face, and tucks her back into the pillows before scrawling a note to leave on the comforter.

_Andrews and I are taking a research trip to the Neitherworld. Be back soon._

_Love you_, he almost writes, deciding to draw a heart with a cartoon snake through it instead.

“Let’s go, assholes.”

He stomps up the stairs and knocks on the stupid chalk door they outlined in the attic. “Why’d you draw it so small?”

Fred shrugs. “We didn’t know how it worked.”

Jughead rolls his eyes and tries to count to ten as the door swings open to its ominous green fog. The Neitherworld always did look sickly and sterile, much like all the places he hates. Waiting rooms, hospitals, loan offices, juvie.

Even the _smell _is rancid in its own way.

“After you,” he gestures, faking a giant grin for them.

Mary gives him an exasperated look and stoops down to make her way through the entrance. Fred flashes him a brief smile as he passes through. Just as Jughead’s about to go, he hears Betty step out into the hall, sleep thick in her throat.

“Jug?”

His ribs ache.

The door will close if he waits too long and then the Andrews will probably be pissy and start without him. Still, he can’t help but shove a broom in the doorway and snap himself in front of her.

Her eyes go wide and he doesn’t have _time_, so he grabs her by her cheeks and slams into her for a kiss. There’s a thread of reddish spit connecting them and he stares at it so he doesn’t feel a spear in his heart when he tells her, “Love you, babes.” Before she can even respond, he blurts out, “Be right back,” and snaps back to the attic where the broom is slowly disintegrating. “Piece of shit,” he mutters, tossing it aside. The broom splinters against the wall just as he slips into the chilly void.

His boots land with a thud on the cheap flooring. With decades of time, the folks in civil service or architecture should do _something _to spruce the place up. The place is about as welcoming as a gas station.

“You ready?” Fred asks, forehead wrinkling.

“Don’t break into song, _Dad_.”

For some reason, the jibe seems to put an extra pep in Fred’s step.

They walk at jarringly different paces just so they’re not _together _but they don’t _lose _one another, either. Jughead swings his arms a little more than usual, not quite comfortable with so many dead creeps in one place. Some red-headed guy who was mauled by a wild animal sits stiffly on the couch, eye dangling nervously in the direction of a girl picking at her teddy bear.

“Not too often you’re among the best looking in the room, am I right?”

Mary gives him a sharp look and turns to the guy with his guts hanging out. “You’re a very handsome young man.” The guy smiles brightly, inciting Fred to step up and flash the wedding ring by wrapping an arm around her.

He decides to throw mild-mannered Fred a bone. “A little young for you, ain’t he, Mare?”

“Says the guy married to a _sixteen-year-old_ girl.”

The waiting room crowd raises their eyebrows at him.

“That’s..._different_,” he finishes, making a face at her before slapping his palms on the check-in desk. “We’re here to drop _her _off for the Ginger convention.”

The girl with the fancy dress organizing Weatherbee’s case files gives him an ironically dead stare before glancing at what he assumes to be her creepy twin. It takes a fair amount of effort not to drop a Stephen King reference as the sash-wearing _Miss Maple _uses her heels to roll herself forward to the service window. Her smile is giant and fake - just like the stop-sign red on her lips. “Take a number. We’ll be _right _with you.”

Mr. Pasty Aristocrat has an evil smirk, _knowing _that it can take hours or decades depending on how useful they’re feeling that day. Civil service seems like a weird curse for those who off themselves because they’re put in a position to fuck over everyone else. The idea of Betty stuck in the Neitherworld dealing with this waiting room makes him want to tear his hair out. Would he be able to sneak behind the counter and curl around her ankles like he does in class? Could he sneak her out for some fresh non-Neitherworld air? They’re already kind of used to public sex - but not around people who can _see _it.

No-nonsense Mary flicks an unimpressed look in the dispenser’s direction. “We know how the counter works. Weatherbee’s expecting us.”

Miss Maple’s gleeful expression darkens. “Fine.” She curls the old-school phone line around one taloned finger as she shoves a giant receiver against her cheek. Slamming the receiver down, she flashes them a dangerous grin. “Weatherbee will see you now.”

They all offer her varying degrees of _thanks_, Jughead frowning when her grin literally turns upside down to a hideous scowl. Whoever assigned the Torture Twins to the front desk of the Neitherworld has a twisted sense of humor.

Jughead hurries ahead of the Andrews with feigned nonchalance to swipe the Rubix cube off Weatherbee’s desk and thwack the metal-ball-thing. “How’s the civil servant biz, my Kool-Aid drinkin’ friend?”

Weatherbee scowls, lips tinged blue. If Jughead had to wear such owlish glasses and deal with newbie ghosts for half an eternity, he’d be in a bad mood too. Snapping his hand over the swinging metal ball set, Weatherbee gestures to the ratty couches only suitable for the dead.

“Please be seated.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” He plops onto one nearly sideways, a leg slung over the arm. He vaguely wishes he could’ve brought Betty.

Mary pulls at her dress and takes the seat closest to him on the other couch.

As Fred eases in beside her, Jughead grins wide enough to taste blood. “Aw, the lovebirds.”

“Says the guy who sticks to Betty like he’s magnetized,” Fred jokes.

He snaps, pens flying and the metal balls straining from their perch to come to him.

“_Enough_!” Weatherbee slams his hand on the desk and negates the charge, everything clattering to the ground amidst Fred’s laughter and Jughead’s twisted smirk. “It says here we’re dealing with a broken curse.” He adjusts his glasses, scanning some file in front of him until it seems to deflate his chest. “Oh. It’s Jughead’s.”

“Congratulations,” he fills in sarcastically. “Where’s my wedding present?”

With a trained passivity, Weatherbee evenly regards the information in front of him. “From what I understand, you coerced a sixteen-year-old girl into marrying you and have been harassing the families in residence ever since.”

“Coerced.” He rolls his eyes, angrily clacking each tile of the Rubix cube in random places. “She liked me, you dipshit. She also happened to want to save _them_. A win-win,” he declares, tossing the cube onto the desk with an exploding clatter of color.

Practically steaming through his nose, Weatherbee clenches his hands together on top of his desk. “I wouldn’t congratulate yourself just yet. The marriage has not been consummated and therefore could be annulled in the right circumstances.”

His jaw hangs open in shock and horror.

Fred glances at Mary, confused. “Does he mean _consecrated_? Like, blessed?”

“In one way, I guess.” She pats his knee as if to quiet him and then there’s this horrible awkward moment where everyone just _looks _at him.

He’s too bewildered to rant about technicalities. “I...we’re...there’s no _cancelling_ my marriage. You can’t just re-curse me.”

“I didn’t say anything about cursing.”

“So don’t _threaten _me or Betty. She’s a _very _happy wife.”

“I’m sure,” Weatherbee deadpans, eyeing him. “Bartered into matrimony. Paired with an exterminator. It’s every little girl’s dream.”

“Maybe it’s more about _me_,” he snaps, feeling his fangs come out with nothing to hiss over.

The Andrews exchange a glance, leaning forward. “She’s gotten very attached to Jughead and to us and we’re worried about what that means.”

“Why, exactly?” Weatherbee takes off his glasses to rub his eyes with one hand like he’s preparing for a round of twenty questions with a bunch of kindergarteners. He squints at Jughead. “Is he being _disagreeable_?”

“Not to Betty,” Fred answers honestly. “We’re all just..._adjusting_.” As if on cue, he pulls on the knee of his jeans. “After the seance, we weren’t sure what to expect. Honestly, we still aren’t sure where any of this is going. The Coopers seem to want a relationship.”

Weatherbee arches an eyebrow. “And?”

“Well, we’re not sure how to give them one. Jughead and Betty–”

“That’s a whole other Sandworm,” Jughead interjects playfully, crouching so his feet are on the seat and he can bounce to get rid of nervous energy so he doesn’t rip Weatherbee’s judgmental head off. “I just don’t want to get her pregnant with a demon baby when we’re planting my seed.”

Everyone in the room looks slightly horrified, which he thinks is hilarious. Death? Not so scary. Him, procreating? Definitely worth a few screams.

“She can’t–” Weatherbee puts his face in his hands, eyes closed. “Your _seed_ is not viable. You’re dead, Jughead. You can’t give life to new things.”

“_Really_? What about these?” He summons a fistful of writhing snakes. Fred flinches, nearly climbing into Mary’s lap in what might be an effort to protect her.

“Those are hauntings, not babies. Don’t worry about impregnating anyone with your demon seed.”

Barking laughter, he can’t believe he got Weatherbee to refer to his personal stuff as “demon seed.” Wasn’t that something kids called him in school? Or was that something he called the Queen Bee? He doesn’t remember. Betty might find it funny. She’d probably quirk her eyebrow and shake her head with an exasperated smile. Maybe there are some nicknames she wants to claim for herself.

_Babes_. _Betts. Sweetie_.

_Juggie’s_.

“Jughead.” Mary’s sharp tone catches his attention and he stops bouncing in his seat. “Did you catch that? He said you can’t summon babies for her. They’ll disapparate.”

“Fine. No summoning spawn. We’re already scheduled to babysit some brats, anyway. My ne–” He elongates the syllable, glancing at Weatherbee, whose eyebrows raise.

“Excuse me? You’re _both _babysitting?”

Jughead clambers down to his seat, one boot propped up on Weatherbee’s desk. “Yeah.”

“Jughead…” Weatherbee seems to actually _read _something in the all-knowing files, frowning. “Is being in contact with your sister’s children going to be a _problem_? I better not hear about some young teen kidnapping foster babies.”

To his surprise, Mary steps up to the plate, leaning forward on the edge of her chair. “Listen, I don’t know what you have in those files there, but Betty is a very _sweet _girl among the living. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t implicate her in any Jughead-worthy schemes.”

He rolls his neck, one hand winding out at the mention. “She’s not some lost sheep seeking guidance. Or kids. Or...whatever. I just want to make sure she has everything she needs from me - living or deceased.”

Fred nods. “We’re still trying to figure out what _we _need to do. That manual is a tough read, Weatherbee. There are no _guidelines _for relationship-building and boundaries between the deceased and the living. One of those groups usually isn’t even aware the other exists and now that they kinda do, we’re just improvising.”

A neon light flashes and burns in the back of Jughead’s mind with the tempting violence of a cigarette glow. He hops up out of his chair and jogs out of the room.

“What are you doing?”

“Weatherbee, write me and Betty up a publishing contract! You’ll have the manual released by the end of the week. Or the century.”

“I’m a caseworker, not a–”

“Get it, or you’ll have ghosts like the Andrews in here every week!”

In the interim of Weatherbee actually considering his proposal and the Andrews trying to decide if they should be offended, Jughead disappears into the hubbub of filing, scurrying civil service workers. A busload of football players with Bulldogs on their helmets are trashing the place looking for _Coach_ and their rival team.

Part of Jughead just wants to go back and tell the good news about the manual to Betty. Another part of him is still _burning_.

A lot of the blue-lipped Farmies work together in this unit. Filing. Organizing. Notarizing. Most of them are too distracted by the steady stream of disoriented athletes to realize he’s not supposed to be digging.

Yanking open a file cabinet, he realizes he has no fucking idea how the damn thing is organized. There’s a Farmie near him who seems disinterested in everything around him, mindlessly shuffling papers into folders in another cabinet. He eyes the ass of one of the guys passing by but otherwise keeps working.

“Hey. You.”

The vacant-eyed blonde boy looks up at him.

“I’m looking for an old buddy. Malachai - a Ghoulie from Riverdale. You need anything else to find his file?”

“No.”

As the boy digs into a cabinet, an electric spark of foreshadowing stabs his nonexistent nerves. “Wait! Um, do you have any files on the living? Betty? Uh, Elizabeth Cooper? Same area. Married.”

“No.”

“_No_. Okay. Malachai only. No big deal. Not like I need to know her curse or what she’s proud of or how much she loves me or anything.” He coughs blood into his hand and wipes it on someone’s hilariously ironic _Hang In There _poster while he waits.

After a few seconds, the blonde boy provides him with a file. “Here you go. Is that everything you need?”

The sheet is so stark - so black and white with its photo of the man he hasn’t seen since he died and the vague, moldy lines detailing his afterlife. Jughead swallows the thick blood that seeps out of his gums and teeth like the back of his throat is a sewer drain.

_Everything he needs._


	6. Weirdos

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween and thanks for sticking with me to see these two weirdos through to their sweet promises and evolution. Shoutout to the now-tumblr-official @bettycooper for her original inspirational aesthetic/birthday present and of course to the tireless, brilliant beta-ing of @jandjsalmon, who helped me agonize over some of these ending decisions with firmness and patience - the likes of which I may never ascend to. Enjoy the strange and unusual love, my friends!

It takes a minute to work up the nerve to float back into her room, prepared to make a scene. “Miss me?” he jeers quietly, only to stop short, shocked by the obscene amount of food on the bed. From the strategic way it’s placed, it’s spelling something. Three long carrots and leeks make an “_I_.” Cookies lay out in the pattern of a heart. Three bananas make the biggest “U” he’s ever seen.

He laughs, his eyes and tongue wet with glee. “Betty.”

A very drowsy, very smiley Betty unwinds from around the pillow she’d been holding and edges towards him. “I spelled it out just in case I fell asleep. Plus, this way you had something to eat.”

He smiles fondly at the way a blush tints her cheeks. “You must _really _love me.”

“I do. Love you. I love you, Jughead Jones.” She pushes his hair back, her expressive eyes gleaming and smile just _so_..._perfectly _lopsided so as to make the world tilt on its access. “Your wife loves you.”

His heart inflates until his wounds feel like they’re just stitches holding in all the love that’s bursting through his seams.

“This is definitely going in the book.”

She shakes her head, laughing. “What?”

“We’re writing a guide together.”

He tackles her back onto the bed, the cookies jumping as if they’re in on the action. Betty squirms, barely able to get her arms and legs around him. “Are you talking about the _Kama Sutra_? Because that’s already a _thing_.”

“Relationships between the living and the deceased,” he murmurs, pressing kisses down the hollow of her throat, hands wandering anywhere and everywhere. “Apparently, you love me.” He grins, all exposed teeth and glee.

She strokes his hair away from his forehead just to look in his eyes better. “I love you, Juggie.”

He _loves _the nickname. He loves Betty. He loves that she’s smiling and writhing under him, practically massaging his whole body. Lost in ecstasy, he kisses her deeply, one hand firmly groping her ass while the other spans the side of her face. No talking. Not now. Not when her tongue tastes a little like the cookies on the bed and she’s arching her hips up into him. Trailing hard kisses down her body, plucking and pushing at her clothes, Jughead opens her thighs and laps at his love.

“Oh, Jughead,” she moans, one palm to her forehead like she’s recovering from a concussion, the other snaking firmly into his hair.

He devours her. Slithers his tongue inside and swipes his name across her clit as _his_. She falls apart and knocks his ears, helping him see her stars.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, sucking a hickey into her thigh to make a heart with one he gave her two days before.

“Juggie, I need…” He glances up, met with dewy eyes and parted lips. Betty tugs him gently by the hair and he follows her guidance until he’s nestled just over her. “I want to try it.”

“Try…?”

“_It_,” is all she says before attempting to roll him on his side. At first, he just sort of stays where he is, trying to pull the thoughts out of her mind. Her eyes twinkle as she starts pushing more forcefully. “Get on your back.”

“Isn’t that my line?”

Being on his back feels a little like spinning. He’s still dazed, licking her come off his face when Betty straddles his thighs and throws off her remaining pajamas.

“_Oh_.” He grabs her hips, lovingly thumbing the thick knot of her bones. Everything sort of blackens like burning paper in his mind as she begins rocking herself against him. His dick is a lightning rod of sensation jolting with every pass. He follows the natural curve of her waist and flicks her nipples, pinching a breast.

“Jug,” she warns, pinning his wrists by his side. Anxious for more of her, to _play_, to _touch_, he lifts her about three inches by flexing up. Gasping, she tightens her thighs.

“You need me to be softer?” he teases, not even fully able to smirk with his eyes rolling back in his head at the sensation of Betty rubbing him off through his clothes.

Her hot breath brands his neck. “I need _you_, Jughead. All of you. Tonight.”

Shuddering, he feels like his skin is shedding. He’s just _feeling._ No armor. Nothing. She undresses him slowly, rubbing his cock through his pants as she plucks each fasten stitching him together.

“Fuck, Betty.” He’s mindless and raw, kicking away the pinstripes and armor.

“Do we need to summon a condom?” She kisses a patch of unblemished skin near his pubic bone.

“N-no. No pregnancy on the horizon. That okay?”

She laughs, eyes glimmering in the dark, and leans her cheek into his palm. “I was more worried about infections.”

“No worries there, babes. Kiss me.”

As she leans up, he fists her hair, torn between the gentle strokes of her lips and the desire to slam their teeth and tongues together. He just wants _this_. Closeness.

“Stay there.” She holds his erection in one hand and bends down to get a taste.

She’s touched him before, stroked him to completion and kissed his skin, but her mouth is so _fucking hot _and so much _better_. Her _tongue_. Various moans jump out his throat like fireworks on the fourth of July. _She _moans, the vibrations plucking his heartstrings and dick like a violin.

“Yes. Good girl.” For that, he gets a nice, long suck that makes his body buckle.

When the wet, hot, pressure leaves, he actually whimper-groans like he’s being woken from a delicious sleep. Betty fumbles a little, stroking his dick while she catches her breath. “Can I get on top of you?”

“Wha...?” He manages to open his eyes enough to make out his naked wife. “On top. Yeah.”

As she climbs over him, he senses the hitch in her breath and sits up to help her get settled. “I’m okay,” she assures him, biting her lower lip.

He wants to see more of her - all of her, like this.

Snapping his fingers, he summons a room full of lit candles and white fairy lights, something he thinks she’d like. She looks up in mild awe, her eyes filled with stars, her skin glowing with entire galaxies.

He tucks her soft hair behind her ear so he can see more of her face. “You’re beautiful, babes.”

For a moment, her eyes shine like she’s going to cry. “So are you, Jughead.”

Before he can protest, she tilts in and his body reacts, holding her close and meeting her in a deep kiss. They’re lost in the moment, so consumed with the push and pull of their orbit that everything fits together in a way that’s natural and automatic. He tilts his hips to align himself with her slick heat. She edges down, shuddering and pressing her furrowed brow against his.

It’s _tight_. It’s _warm_. It’s _everything_. Not just sex, but _intimacy_, he thinks, as sappy as that may be.

“Just a second,” she whispers, stroking his cheeks.

He licks his lips, accidentally brushing hers. “How about forever?”

The bright laugh she emits tinkles throughout his whole body, unknotting his nerves and filling him with _happiness_. Eyelashes thick and dewy, she kisses him. After a few more moments of tender, playful, kisses, she lifts herself up and slides back down on him. This is _heaven_, he thinks, even though only one of them is dead.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembers the phrase “the little death” and hopes it’s just as good for Betty as it is for him. It will be. They have forever.

~~~

She wants to go again. They keep trying until neither of them can handle any kind of consciousness. He’s not even sure if he’s really _hard _by the end or he’s flexing in the hopes he can pleasure her. With Betty sleeping soundly on his chest, thumbing the scars and beauty marks on his ribs, Jughead has time to map out the twinkly-light universe on her ceiling.

It’s perfect. _She’s _perfect. He kisses her forehead, relishing in the way she squeezes him back even in sleep.

“I love you,” he murmurs, still soaked and stiff as her silky thigh brushes his dick.

In the morning, her room may look back to normal, but he knows the world has changed. He’s so sated that he barely has the energy to move the blankets to get access to the snacks on the bed. Still, he’s not one to waste food, and manages to make his way through most of it by the time her alarm goes off.

“Good morning. May I interest you in a banana?” he teases, ignoring the sweet rancidness of her morning breath in favor of pressing his length against her, tracing her skin with the knotted part of the actual fruit’s skin.

Barely awake, she exhales a laugh and nuzzles into him. “Is that all you think about?”

A quip fumbles on his tongue. “No. I also plot new ways to cause chaos.”

“Mm. Oh! How did it go with the Andrews last night?”

“Well….” She turns to hold herself upright, gorgeous green eyes wide in alarm. “Everything’s fine, Betts.” At the use of the nickname, her gaze dips to his mouth. Must be a good endearment for her, then. “Apparently, the Neitherworld’s nervous about us kidnapping kids in the future thanks to our unlikely, infertile, happy, unholy union.”

A smile cracks through her nervousness. “You want kids?”

“No. Although as we were leaving, the Andrews got caught up talking to this guy with a six-pack. I think they might adopt him.”

“I’m so happy to hear that! They could use a few more friends and I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to have a brother.” Although she rolls her eyes playfully, he can tell by the hopeful edge to her smile that she really wants a family. Not kids, necessarily, but a _family_. People who will stand by her for their eternity. She’s one of those people for him. She’s his family.

“His scars aren’t as impressive as mine,” he jokes, earning a chuckle. He sits up, wondering if he should put his blazer on for the more serious part of the talk so she’s not so distracted by his bare chest, which is something he’d normally preen about. “I saw Malachai’s case file.”

Everything hits pause. Betty stares, frozen. Even the ceiling fan is silent and unmoving. Part of him hopes _someone _makes a damn sound in this house so he doesn’t feel like ripping his own skin off to be raw muscle underneath.

“He’s cursed. He’s roaming around in his precious car. Keeps breaking down, though. Makes him want order instead of chaos.” Jughead lets out a rueful chuckle. “If only he had a hot mechanic wife to help him in the afterlife.” Apparently, Betty is still too caught up in the revelation to comment on his sense of humor. ”He’s not...” _Worth my time_, he wants to say, all poised and grown up. “Haunted,” comes out instead.

Her eyebrow flexes like it’s on the precipice of hopping off her face to make notes on a map. “Are we...gonna fix that?”

“What’s there to fix?” He shrugs, all faux nonchalance, snapping in a fancy root beer float in a martini glass just so he can suck on the worm around its ring and lift his pinky all bougie and shit. He offers Betty another one, hers a Crystal Light with a gummy worm. “We solved the case and figured out where he is. No point in beating a dead horse’s ass.”

“Jughead.” She stares at him incredulously, not even taking the drink. “You...you’re just giving it up?”

“Giving _what _up?”

“Your revenge? Your big plot...your...plans?”

Slurping the gummy worm between his lips, Jughead gnaws on the tangy sweetness, wondering which kind of flesh he prefers. “If he happens to come by Riverdale, I’ll lay out a nail bed or get a bird to shit on his windshield, okay? I’m just changing tactics.”

“Tactics?! Wha–enlighten me, Jughead, because I thought you were ready to literally raise hell on those…” She trips on the word _murderers_, knowing his afterlife has been a skip away from that. An exterminator. An assassin.

“Pots and kettles?” he teases. Ever a darling, Betty flushes a deep red and sinks into the mattress like it can hide her word choices. “The best revenge is a life well lived,” he chants pompously, inhaling the contents of her glass. He snaps both martini glasses out of existence and licks his lips before crawling across the bed. “And I am the _best_, aren’t I, Betty?”

She looks like a pleading kitten with her eyes all big, leaning into his hand as he pushes her hair behind her ear. The blink is a _yes_.

“Say it,” he urges.

“You’re amazing,” she acquiesces, leaning forward to capture his lips in a kiss. “You’re my husband and you’re wonderful.” She kisses him again. The heat spreads from their mouths down to his chest, making his wounds wet in excitement. “You need a little ego stroke?”

He thrusts her hip until she’s on her back.

“Yes. And you didn’t say the best,” he warns, nipping at the tip of her breast, reveling in her short, sharp breaths.

“I...you’re…”

“You’ll be _screaming _it soon, Betts.”

He winks with devilish intent. Making his way down her body, Jughead prepares for the best part of the feast on his bed. Her.

~~~

He plops down next to Betty at the breakfast table, rattling the silverware and earning looks from Hal, who can’t see him yet.

“Is that...Fred?” There’s a little hopefulness in his voice that they can commence the morning jam session.

“No, Dad. It’s Jughead.”

“Morning, _Dad_,” he teases, becoming visible and taking a huge chomp out of the jam and toast Betty's presumably prepared for him since she's pouring milk into a cereal bowl for herself.

Flinching, Hal goes pale, eyeing Jughead’s scabs before glancing down at his paper. “I presume you both have another busy day ahead of you today?”

“Yep. Babysitting for Jelly.” Betty shoots Jughead a sidelong gaze that inspires an eager bit of footsie on his end. “Apparently, Juggie and I will be writing a manuscript.”

For once, Hal has the decency to look intrigued. “What - _ghost _writing?”

Jughead snorts._ Dad joke. _Nice.

“It’s about relationships between the Living and the Deceased.” She puts her spoon down, eyeing her father thoughtfully. “We should probably interview you and the Andrews family.”

“That sounds like a great idea! What about Penelope? I’m sure she’d take a break from her art studio. Oh, she’d love to be quoted, maybe interviewed about her work...”

Betty rolls her eyes and stabs her cereal. Immensely protective, Jughead runs his hand along her shoulders and massages her neck. “Perhaps we’ll have a section for her in the _what not to do_ column regarding seances and goading the dead.”

As if on cue, Penelope enters from the kitchen and stops short in breathless surprise at the sight of Jughead. She even puts a hand to her chest as if to slow her beating heart. “Oh my! If I’d known we were having company…”

“Honey, we kind of _always _have company,” Hal reminds her.

With goopy, false lashes and a smudged red smile, Penelope grins at him. “You’d make a lovely model, Jughead. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to sit with me for a spell?”

The idea that he’d do _anything _for Penelope is kind of hilarious. Her greenhouse must be emitting some toxic fumes beyond the paints she spends most of her day flinging at canvas.

“As much as I’d _love _to be immortalized,” he begins, lazily stretching and posing like a statue of a Greek god, “I prefer to remain anonymous. Once word got out how beautiful I am, Betty’d have to fight them off in droves.”

“Like you wouldn’t be right by my side,” she declares, hand on his knee.

Damn, she really knows how to call him out.

Penelope sighs wistfully. “Oh well. I can work from memory.”

_Because that worked so well with the Andrews’ portraits_. He grins, glancing at Betty to see if she’s thinking the same thing.

Biting the inside of her cheek, Betty doesn’t look up as she swirls her spoon in her milk and cereal. “How are the Lodges, by the way?”

“They’re fine. I think they’re still arguing with each other about whether the accident was a sign.”

“To mend their wicked ways?”

Hal squints at his paper. “Well, more accurately, whether they should invest in a casino instead of an art installation.”

“Glad to be so inspirational.”

“Come on, we can’t be late.” She taps his knee, then gestures to her cereal. He grabs the bowl by the rim and chugs its contents, the slightly soggy sustenance sliding down his throat.

A burp erupts from his gullet, aimed up at the ceiling in a haphazard alert to the Andrews that they’ll be on their way soon. He drags his sleeve across his cheeks. “I love second breakfast.”

“Second? What was first?” Hal takes an innocent sip of coffee.

“Come on!” Betty hisses, dragging Jughead’s sleeve. Penelope smiles to herself. Maybe she’s enjoying the constant hubbub in her haunted house. That, or her sex positivity extends to her stepdaughter and son-in-law. They’re a very weird family.

~~~***

The house in total chaos, exactly the way he loves it. Well, at least until the evening when he gets his date with Betty. Jughead pushes Griff’s bassinet with his foot every time the rocking chair Fred built comes close enough so they can both be soothed by the motion. In the corner, Penn’s reading comics with Archie, who keeps glancing over like he’s still afraid of the stuffed dog Mary made the kid. “Are you going to stop giving me the hanging eyeball and tell me what you want?”

He spares a worried look at Penn, who seems absorbed by whatever action is happening across the panels, and crosses the room to Jughead. “You met Betty in the afterlife, right?”

“Yeah.” His wife’s chatting with Mary in the kitchen about whether or not she should apply for internships, start her own Medium business, or take up Weatherbee’s offer to do a book series. Logistical stuff. He’ll follow her anywhere and everywhere. Thanks to her, he’s kept up his writing. It’s something to do in her more boring classes when they’re less agreeably engaged. The babysitting gig seems to be working out for everybody - the kids all being young enough to be excited about ghostly friends and the ghosts grateful for the shot of liveliness.

“Do you think it’s possible…” Archie’s gaze lingers on Betty a bit too long, so Jughead snaps his fingers to get his attention and make his wandering eyeball snap back into place. He reels back. “Sorry! It’s just, do you think it’s possible for _me _to meet someone too? I mean, I met plenty of girls when I was alive, but I’m not sure that’s appropriate thing to do now that I’m..._deceased. _Do I try to haunt somebody?”

“_Haunt _somebody? You trying to hook a live one, Arch?”

“I don’t know! Who’s available for dating? Who could _see _me? I was lucky enough to run into you guys in the waiting room. Maybe I could hang out there, see who’s interested?”

“A waiting room rat?” He shudders. “Creepy.”

“What’s the big deal? You waited around for Betty.”

“Because I was trapped, not desperate. If I was able to get out of that town I probably would’ve–”

“Creeped?”

He takes one look at Archie’s All-American mug and laughs in admission. “Okay, from one creep to another, I think finding a soulmate isn’t too easy. Betty’s...a rarity.”

“I know. She’s _everything_,” he mocks gently, laughing at the shove Jughead bestows on him. “But I really want to meet somebody. Do you think Betty has a sister?”

Glancing at Betty, Jughead thumbs the mark on his lip. “She does, but Polly barely sees _Betty_, let alone spooky things.”

“What if there’s a lounge for spirits? I like to sing–”

“Hey, Uncle Archie likes to sing!” Fred announces cheerily. “What do you think, could we let him in our band?”

Floyd wrinkles his young face, thumbing at the old guitar JB got him from the thrift shop. “I guess so. But we can’t sing about all that mushy stuff.”

Hissing a laugh, Jughead has to cover his mouth so as not to wake up Gryphon in the bassinet.

Archie rolls his eyes good-naturedly at the child. “Just wait, buddy. Once you meet the right person, it’ll be all you wanna sing about.”

“Nope! Not me!”

Fred places a genial hand on his shoulder. “All right, what do you want to sing about, then?”

Ever the mysterious one, Floyd leans up and whispers into “Uncle Fred’s” ear.

“We’re _waiting_,” he calls, faux impatient with his head rolled back. Of course he can hear them. “Again? Don’t you know any other songs?”

“Floyd has made a request.” Fred looks at Archie, who nods back and stands, ready to practice. “Jug? You gonna help out?”

With a world-weary sigh, Jughead snaps and starts the twanging that’s been on repeat ever since Fred introduced the kids to the damn thing. Everyone’s into it except for Penn, who rolls his eyes like he’s too cool for dance-alongs. As Jughead readies to snap and haul him into the air for a solo act, Betty shoots him a look.

“Fine,” he mutters, sticking out his tongue like it’s a striped snake of its own, or maybe a checkered start flag for their own dance. The music’s distracting everyone else.

Archie taps his foot like his whole body depends on it. The white man shuffle makes its glorious return, Fred passing on the tradition to Floyd, who jerks around with the uncoordinated grace of a child.

Mary’s, “Oh boy, here they go,” and Betty’s giggle make him smile.

“Shake, shake, shake, Senora. Shake your body line,” the boys chant along with the magically provided music. “Work, work, work, Senora. Work it all the time!”

“Dance, dance, dance, Senora!” Fred implores, waving Mary over, even though those aren’t the lyrics at the time.

“This is the last time tonight!” she swears, but she seems pretty happy to be spun into his arms. They laugh at Floyd’s disappointed face, like he’s being left out, and offer him a hand to dance in the circle with them.

Betty, on the other hand, is still in the kitchen, smiling at everyone like she won the lottery of insanity. The jackpot being Jughead, obviously.

As everyone jams to the music, thrusting their shoulders in and out like it’s the fucking hokey pokey instead of a Jamaican-inspired dance hit, Jughead snaps at the bassinet to keep it magically rocking around the room and turns to Betty.

“Shall we, m’lady?” She’s the only one he’ll dance with. Abscond with. They could sneak into her room for some nookie (although, sadly, they’ve never done more than kiss when she’s babysitting, even with a full in-house care team).

“We shall.” She tugs him towards her with both hands, the sexiest, sweetest thing he’s ever seen.

“You know, after all this haunting, I’m gonna need to replenish my energy,” he teases, mouth against her ear while their hips touch, moving side-to-side and floating with her effortlessly.

“Looking forward to it, Juggie.” She pulls back, eyes bright and happy and full of _him_ when she says, “All of it.”

~~~HAPPY HAUNTING EVER AFTER~~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We all know *I* have a headcanon for how their lives would continue. Jughead would definitely get birds to shit on Malachai's car and ghost write a ton of books with Betty's help. Betty *might* go to college, but more likely she'd be a liaison between the living and the dead, writing books and being a social worker on the living side of things. There was possibly going to be a scene between JB and Jughead but I cried too much even thinking about it so you're welcome for not including that :P Just presume she's comforted and weirded out for now that her kids think their Uncle Jughead is haunting them (although I maintain she'd be impressed/kinda pissed she couldn't see him most of the time). Archie might meet a certain lounge singer or the Lodge's daughter next time they roll into town to start up their casino/speakeasy. Fred and Mary love helping ALL THE BABIES. And Bughead? Well, we know without a doubt they get a happily ever after. No matter what - they're spending every eternity together. There's a whole other essay on my opinion how that plays out hahaha. Questions? Predictions? Thoughts? Lines to throw at me in lieu of treats? Thank you so much for reading along and have a wonderful day!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to bettysnooper for making [the aesthetic](https://bettysnooper.tumblr.com/post/186201434436/jughead-jughead-jugh-aah-betty-finished-with) that reminded me how much I love this movie. Thanks to my beta, @jandjsalmon for enduring my insanity. Normally I only post chapter one once the whole thing is done but I made an exception because it's bettysnooper's birthday ^-^ How do you think the newlyweds are gonna shake loose? Let me know what you think so far of the shenanigans below please! Comments feed my depraved little bughead heart.


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